Chancellor John Healey has said a package to streamline regulation on reporting requirements as well as further tariff reductions will save businesses around £800m a year.
In a pre-Budget announcement to offer “breathing space” to businesses, Healey confirmed that the government would make reporting requirements for firms and asset managers easier.
The changes on reporting regulations and an extension of import tariff suspensions on more than 250 products contribute towards a government target to reduce the administrative burden of regulation by 25 per cent by 2030.
“British firms are fed up with form-filling and pointless paperwork that eats into valuable time and money when they simply want to get on with running their businesses,” Healey said.
“That is why we are cutting unnecessary bureaucracy and giving businesses the breathing space they need to invest, innovate and create good jobs.”
Andy Burnham and business secretary Jonathan Reynolds will convene business leaders in Number 10 North on Friday to discuss reforms. The Labour government has pushed to implement a ‘Tell Us Once’ principle on reporting requirements.
The government said compliance rules would become easier for business owners while a simplification of corporate reporting requirements could save businesses operating as part of a wider group about £20,000 a year.
Small businesses will not have to file profit and losses on Companies House, a public database for firms’ accounts, for April 2028.
Healey backs ‘bloody-minded’ businesses
The new policies follow the creation of a ‘small business regulatory taskforce’ featuring top industry group leaders and government officials to cut costs for businesses.
Tina McKenzie, the chair Federation of Small Businesses, who was also a part of the group, said new plans would “help lessen the burden of red tape on small businesses, enabling them to devote more resources to growth and job creation”.
Burnham said it was “not right that pointless bureaucracy gets in the way of people working hard to build something that matters to their high street”.
Healey has taken steps to woo businesses ahead of the Budget, even as some economists believe his headroom has been halved to around £12bn and expectations that he may need to raise taxes in order to ease pressures on public finances.
He pledged to back “bloody-minded” business founders looking to make a profit.
“I want to be a Chancellor who backs business in Britain making a profit and those entrepreneurs who, in the end, are the ones who challenge the status quo, come up with innovative ideas and are trying – some of them through sheer bloody-mindedness – to keep going through these sorts of pressures,” he told The Times.