Compliance costs hit U.K. transport, warehousing

Compliance costs hit U.K. transport, warehousing    Smaller businesses in the transport and storage industry are among those losing more than '2.7 billion every year due to government red tape, according to research by the nonprofit British business lobby the Forum of Private Business (FPB).
   The group arrived at the figured based on feedback from members on the amount of company time spent on government-imposed bureaucracy. The research was released in a report focusing on the cost of compliance, and found that transport and storage firms are forced to spend an average of 33 hours of company time each month on form-filling and paperwork.
   Those with nine or less employees spend an average of 29 hours, those with between 10 and 50 employees spend around 41 hours, and firms with up to 249 workers devote about 131 hours, FPB said.
   The required compliance ranged from fields as varied as health and safety to dismissals and environmental issues.
   'It's terrible,' said FPB member Ross Hunter, from family-run firm Hunters Coach Hire in Midlothian, Scotland. 'I can't put a figure on the amount of time we spend complying with it all but it's silly. It's gone too far. Small companies can't afford all these different things — it's made life very, very difficult and they're coming out with new stuff all the time.'
   FPB policy representative Matt Goodman said the U.K.'s Better Regulation Executive, an agency set up to cut down on red tape for businesses, must empower the country's small companies, not burden them.
   'As part of a new department with a broader remit, the BRE must continue to put the smallest businesses at the forefront of its plans to change the culture of bureaucracy in the U.K.,' he said. 'Our research shows that complying with red tape remains one of the major cost burdens facing smaller businesses, swallowing up valuable time and money that could be used more profitably elsewhere.'