The Institute of Directors (IoD) has backed the Government’s objective of reducing regulatory burdens on business, after ministers today announced measures they said would save firms almost £800m a year in administrative and tariff costs.
The package, set out by Chancellor John Healey ahead of the Budget next Wednesday, includes pausing a requirement, due from April 2028, for the smallest companies to file full profit and loss accounts at Companies House. HM Treasury said the pause forms part of the Government’s “Tell Us Once” ambition, under which businesses should only have to give information to official bodies once.
According to the Treasury, the measures include more than ÂŁ600m a year in regulatory administration savings. Streamlining company reporting requirements accounts for up to ÂŁ290m of that, reducing duplicative reporting by asset managers for ÂŁ105m and simplifying the home buying and selling process for ÂŁ116m.
The Treasury said further simplification of corporate reporting could save businesses that operate as part of a wider national group up to ÂŁ20,000 a year.
The Government is also extending import tariff suspensions on more than 250 products that were due to expire on 31 December. They will now run until December 2028, which the Treasury said would save businesses up to ÂŁ155m a year.
The Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, and the Business Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, were due to meet small business owners and representative groups at Number 10 North today to accept the majority of recommendations from the Small Business Regulatory Taskforce, a joint government and industry group launched in June.
Under those recommendations, the Government said it would standardise requirements for bidding for public contracts in sectors such as construction, streamline ONS business surveys, make support and guidance easier to find on GOV.UK and give small businesses a way to report disproportionate regulations.
The Government said the changes support its plan to cut the administrative burden of regulation on businesses by 25 per cent by the end of this Parliament, which it estimates would save businesses with employees 280 million hours a year. Full details of the individual savings measures are due to be published on GOV.UK on Wednesday.
Ilaria Lavalle Miller, chief governance and policy officer at the IoD, said: “We support the Government’s objective of reducing unnecessary burdens and disproportionate costs for businesses, particularly smaller firms. Duplicative reporting requirements should be avoided, and regulatory frameworks should be as simple and proportionate as possible.”
She added: “Effective reform requires robust impact assessments, meaningful consultation, and coherent delivery across government departments, agencies and regulators. This is essential to avoid piecemeal changes that risk creating further complexity and inconsistency.”
Ms Lavalle Miller said regulatory reform should also align with the UK’s wider trade objectives and its relationships with key international partners.
Liz Barclay, the IoD’s special adviser for small business and entrepreneurship and a former Small Business Commissioner, said: “The Government’s commitment to making life easier for small and micro businesses is welcome.”
She said: “Disproportionate regulation and unnecessary administrative burdens take business owners away from what they do best: building and growing successful businesses.”
Ms Barclay said many small businesses would welcome measures such as “Tell Us Once”, alongside improved support and guidance, but added: “As the Government takes forward these reforms, it should also consider the cumulative impact of introducing multiple changes at the same time on already stretched founders and owners.”
Mr Healey said: “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.”
Tina McKenzie, national chair of the Federation of Small Businesses, said the taskforce report was “an important first step” and described pausing the profit and loss filing plans as “a huge step in the right direction”.
Rain Newton-Smith, chief executive of the CBI, said: “The test now is delivery.”
The announcement comes days before Mr Healey’s first Budget. Earlier this week, Andy Haldane, president of the British Chambers of Commerce, called on the Chancellor to begin cutting business costs at the Budget, while the CBI reported in September that businesses paid almost £345bn in tax in 2025-26.
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