The Government has announced proposals to scrap or simplify more than 160 regulations affecting retailers, in response to thousands of comments made during its Red Tape Challenge.
A set of proposals to ease the burden of regulation on both small businesses and consumers were revealed today by Business Secretary Vince Cable, and include plans to:
· Replace or simplify more than 12 pieces of overlapping consumer rights law with a single piece of legislation
· Consolidate and simplify procedures for age verification or identification to sell age-restricted goods
· Simplify the poisons licensing system for low-risk products such as fly spray and toilet cleaner
· Scrap symbolic cases of heavy-handed intervention, including lowering the age for buying Christmas crackers
· Remove redundant legislation like the antiquated Trading with the Enemy Act
Mr Cable said: "We have to roll back the number of rules and regulations that our businesses have to deal with if we are to create the right conditions for sustainable economic growth. We have heard these promises by successive Governments before but these first proposals from the Red Tape Challenge show that we're serious about doing that and we are making real progress."
The Government has also kept certain regulations which were given widespread support by the public, including the hallmarking regime.
Notably, no change has been made to the widely-debated Sunday Trading laws, which gained 2,695 responses during the retail stage of the consultation.
A spokesperson from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) told
DIY Week: "There were an awful lot of comments on Sunday Trading, but after going through them all and seeing there were so many on both sides of the argument, we have decided that as small retailers can already open when they want, we're going to keep the regime as it is at the moment to keep the balance that we have."
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) welcomed the proposals, but said the Government shouldn't rely on the Red Tape Challenge as the only way of easing business burdens.
BRC Director General Stephen Robertson said: "I'm delighted the Government recognises the importance to growth of easing the business burdens it's responsible for... The Red Tape Challenge signals the right intent but more support for growth would come from a comprehensive moratorium on new regulation for the life of this Parliament for businesses of all sizes, not just the smallest. Surely what's damaging for a company with 10 staff can't be justified for one with 1,000?"
Almost 9,000 comments were made on the Red Tape Challenge website after the retail stage was launched on April 7. Further public consultation on changes to legislation will be required before the new proposals can be implemented, and more information on this will be announced in due course, said BIS.
Just this week, The Forum of Private Business revealed small firms are spending more time and money on complying with regulations, with
the annual cost of compliance for UK SMEs reaching £16.8bn.