Red tape blitz to boost business

Government will exempt many businesses from health and safety inspections and will scrap or overhaul over 3,000 regulations in order to boost UK business.

 

In these tough times, businesses need to focus on creating jobs and growth without being tied up in unnecessary red tape.

We've listened to business’s concerns and are determined to put common sense back into areas like health and safety to reduce the costs and fear of burdensome inspections.

Today, Conservative Business Minister Michael Fallon is announcing that shops, offices, pubs and clubs will no longer face burdensome health and safety inspections. From April 2013, binding new rules on both the Health & Safety Executive and local authorities will exempt hundreds of thousands of businesses from burdensome health and safety inspections. In the future, only businesses which operate in high-risk areas, or have a poor record, will be inspected.

In addition, from next month, the Government will change the law so companies will only be liable for civil damages in health and safety cases if they have shown to be negligent. This constitutes a welcome change to the current law that businesses can automatically be liable for damages, if there is a workplace accident, even if they are not proven to be negligent.

Conservatives in Government are also taking radical action on red tape in a further measure to boost economic growth. We are systematically examining some 6,500 substantive regulations that we inherited through the Red Tape Challenge and are committed to abolishing or substantially reducing at least 3,000 of these regulations. Complete identification of the regulations to be scrapped or overhauled will be complete by December 2013.

Business Minister Michael Fallon said:
“Cutting red tape shows the Government is serious about helping business to flourish. We’re getting out of the way by bringing common sense back to health and safety.”