More businesses to be categorised as small businesses

Prime Minister Liz Truss has announced plans to release thousands of businesses from reporting requirements and other regulations in the future.

Currently, small businesses are presumed to be exempt from certain regulations. However, many medium sized businesses – those with between 50 and 249 employees - still report that they are spending over 22 staff days per month on average dealing with regulation, and over half of all businesses consider regulation to be a burden to their operation.

Truss on Sunday has announced plans to widen these exemptions to businesses with fewer than 500 employees for future and reviewed regulations, meaning an additional 40,000 businesses will be freed from future bureaucracy and the accompanying paperwork that is expensive and burdensome.

“Regulatory exemptions are often granted for SMEs, which the EU defines at below 250 employees. However, we are free to take our own approach and exempt more businesses to those with under 500 employees. We will also be able to apply this to retained EU law currently under review, which we would not have been able to do without our exit from the EU,” a statement from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy said.

The department added that the exemption will be applied in a proportionate way to ensure workers’ rights and other standards will be protected, while at the same time reducing the burden for growing businesses.

The changed threshold will be applicable from Monday (3 October) to all new regulations under development as well as those under current and future review, including retained EU laws.

The government will also look at plans to consult in the future on potentially extending the threshold to businesses with 1,000 employees, once the impact on the current extension is known, according to the statement.