Red Tape Challenge Laid Down

The hospitality, food and drink industries get the chance today to declare war on the rules and red tape that are holding back their growth and stifling their chances of success.

For the next two weeks, the Red Tape Challenge will allow people to name and shame the regulations they want to see scrapped.

The website will give them the opportunity to say whether regulations targeted at these sectors – ranging from measures on arsenic and chloroform introduced over thirty years ago to rules on ice cream van jingles - are still necessary or are actually examples of excessive red tape.

And the civil servants responsible for them will then have to justify each rule and, where the case for their existence cannot be justified, consign them to the scrapheap. The site also allows the industry to flag up ways in which problems can be solved without intrusive government regulations.

Former Whitbread Chief Executive, Alan Parker CBE, will lead a group made up of industry professionals who will action the feedback received during the Red Tape Challenge, producing a report and set of recommendations for DCMS and government in the wider context to implement.

Tourism Minister John Penrose said: “As the Prime Minister said last month, proper standards in things like fire safety and food hygiene are vital for us all, so where regulations are fit for purpose they should stay. But everyone knows this is not always the case – and there are just too many petty, outdated and repetitive rules and regulations holding back business in this country. So cutting through the red tape is absolutely central to the Government’s vision for Britain, and our plans to grow the economy. We want to be the first Government in modern history to leave office having reduced the overall burden of regulation, not increased it.”

(BMcN/GK)