The UK government has launched a major offensive on excessive regulation, recognizing that outdated or overly bureaucratic rules are a silent tax on enterprise, stifling innovation, and hindering economic growth. This is not merely an aspiration; it’s a concrete commitment: an ambitious target to reduce the administrative burdens of regulation on business by 25% by the end of the current Parliament.
To achieve this significant goal—which has been baselined against a figure of £22.4 billion a year in administrative costs—the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) has issued a vital call to action: a business questionnaire titled ‘Unlocking Business: Reform Driven by You’.
This is your moment to directly influence the future regulatory landscape. The government is moving beyond theoretical debate and asking for specific, real-world evidence from businesses of all sizes, entrepreneurs, and industry experts. The aim is to create a regulatory system that is truly fit for purpose, minimizes burdens without reducing essential safeguards, and positions the UK for sustained growth.
The Core Problem: Why Regulation Needs Reform
While effective regulation is fundamental to protecting consumers, workers, and the wider public, its application can often drift into the realm of the counterproductive. The government’s analysis and experience have identified two primary areas where regulatory excess is most keenly felt by businesses: current activity costs and opportunity costs.
The Burden of Current Activity Costs (Direct and Indirect)
This category focuses on the regulations that impose clear, tangible costs on your day-to-day operations. The DBT isn’t just looking for general complaints; they want specific examples of rules that are simply an unnecessary drain on resources.
The Financial and Time Drain
- Direct Costs: This includes the explicit costs of compliance, such as fees, charges, or the money spent on external consultants, software, or specialized personnel solely to meet a regulatory requirement. For a small business, a single, poorly designed form or a repetitive, mandatory training course can represent hundreds or even thousands of pounds lost.
- Indirect Costs: Often more insidious, these are the costs resulting from how regulations are applied. This could be the cumulative employee time spent on form-filling, record-keeping, navigating complex guidance, or engaging in time-consuming administrative tasks. Recent data shows that businesses are spending 8.0 days per month on average dealing with regulation—time that could be spent on productive work, sales, or innovation.
Think of an overly complex reporting structure for a micro-brewery, or a duplicative filing requirement for a small family-run café. These are the “pointless paperwork” examples the government is actively looking to scrap.
The Stifle of Opportunity Costs (Inhibiting Growth and Innovation)
This is about the cost of things you don’t do because of regulatory friction. Regulation should not be a roadblock to innovation, yet in many cases, it acts as a significant deterrent to investment and expansion.
Delays, Uncertainty, and Global Competitiveness
- Delaying or Preventing Opportunities: The questionnaire seeks evidence on how complex regulatory processes—such as permitting, licensing, or slow approvals—have caused you to delay a product launch, halt an investment, or even abandon a promising business venture altogether.
- International Comparison: The government is keen to understand if the UK’s regulatory environment is holding businesses back compared to international competitors. If a simpler process elsewhere allows a foreign competitor to move faster or operate more cheaply, that is a critical piece of evidence needed for reform.
A lack of clarity and predictability in the regulatory system is a major inhibitor of long-term investment. If a business cannot confidently predict the regulatory hoops they will have to jump through in the next three to five years, they are far less likely to commit capital to significant projects.
The Government’s Strategy: Pinpointing Problems and Delivering Reforms
The DBT’s approach is surgical: to identify the exact aspects of regulations or their implementation that create problems, allowing them to pinpoint where to make changes for maximum impact. This evidence-based process is designed to avoid the pitfalls of past, less successful deregulation drives by focusing on where the pain points truly lie.
Reforms Already Underway
Building on measures announced earlier in 2025, the government has already signaled a commitment to reform, targeting significant administrative savings. These include:
- Corporate Reporting Streamlining: Proposals to reduce narrative reporting burdens, such as increasing size thresholds for corporate reporting and exempting many medium-sized companies from the requirement to produce a Strategic Report. These changes alone are expected to save businesses hundreds of millions annually.
- Planning System Reform: Initiatives to speed up planning decisions for new homes and critical infrastructure, including the use of digital verification and AI models, aiming to cut bureaucratic delays and save hundreds of millions in administrative costs.
- Regulatory Simplification: Actions like consolidating certain financial regulators’ data returns and reviewing high-priority pieces of environmental guidance to ensure they are fit for purpose and easy to navigate.
These initial actions, which have already identified £1.5 billion in administrative savings, are just the foundation for the larger £5.6 billion reduction target (25% of the baseline).
The Power of Your Evidence
The ‘Unlocking Business: Reform Driven by You’ questionnaire is the engine that will power the next phase of reform.
Focusing on Specifics
The government is urging you to be as clear and precise as possible. If you cannot name a specific Statutory Instrument or Act of Parliament, simply describe the issue and its impact.
What to share:
- The Rule/Process: Describe the regulation or regulatory process in detail (e.g., “The annual data return for environmental compliance”).
- The Impact (Cost/Delay): Quantify the burden (e.g., “Requires 80 hours of staff time annually,” or “Delayed a £5m investment by 6 months”).
- The Proposed Solution: Suggest a simple, common-sense alternative (e.g., “Could be simplified to a triennial reporting cycle,” or “Digital submission should replace paper forms”).
Highlighting Good Practice
Reform is a two-way street. The government is also looking for examples of good regulatory practice—instances where a regulator or a specific rule has been implemented in a way that is clear, proportionate, and supports business objectives. Highlighting these examples can help the DBT identify models for wider adoption across the UK’s regulatory bodies.
The Deadline to Drive Change: 16 December 2025
The window for providing this crucial evidence is open until 16 December 2025.
The government’s success in hitting the 25% administrative burden reduction target hinges on the quality and volume of the evidence it receives from the business community. This is a rare and powerful opportunity for every business owner, manager, and investor to stop complaining about “red tape” and to instead help the Department for Business and Trade snip it at the source.
By sharing your experiences—both the unnecessary costs you bear and the opportunities you miss—you will be directly contributing to a more dynamic, growth-friendly UK economy. Your voice is the key to unlocking the next phase of deregulation.
Don’t let this opportunity pass you by. The full downloadable version of the questionnaire, with essential introductory text, is available on the government’s website. Review the document, gather your specific evidence, and submit your response before the deadline.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on UK Business Deregulation
To help you understand the core mechanics and importance of the ‘Unlocking Business: Reform Driven by You’ questionnaire, here are answers to five key questions:
1. What is the precise target for administrative burden reduction, and what is the current progress?
The UK government has set an ambitious target to reduce the annual administrative costs of regulation on businesses by 25% by the end of the current Parliament.
- The Baseline: The initial administrative burden on businesses has been established at £22.4 billion a year.
- The Target Saving: The government is therefore aiming to achieve a total annual reduction of £5.6 billion in administrative costs.
- Current Progress: Building on initial reforms—such as streamlining corporate reporting for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and modernising the planning system—the government has already announced £1.5 billion in identified savings, which will contribute toward the final goal.
2. Who is the government primarily inviting to respond to this call for evidence?
The questionnaire, ‘Unlocking Business: Reform Driven by You,’ is specifically aimed at gathering direct, tangible feedback from those who experience the regulatory landscape daily.
- Primary Respondents: Businesses of all sizes (micro, small, medium, and large), entrepreneurs, and investors.
- Wider Stakeholders: The DBT also welcomes input from industry experts, trade bodies, consumer groups, and academics who have insights into the costs and benefits of the UK’s regulatory system.
3. What is the difference between ‘Current Activity Costs’ and ‘Opportunity Costs’ in the context of this reform?
These are the two main types of regulatory burden the DBT wants to identify:
- Current Activity Costs: These are the direct, ongoing costs of complying with existing rules. This includes the monetary cost of fees, the time spent by employees on form-filling and record-keeping (the biggest component), and resources used for mandatory training or reporting.
- Opportunity Costs: These are the potential losses—the growth, innovation, and investment that are delayed or prevented entirely because regulation is too complex, slow, or uncertain. This includes businesses choosing not to launch a new product, enter a new market, or invest in new facilities due to regulatory friction compared to other countries.
4. What should a business provide if they cannot name the specific regulation that is causing a problem?
The DBT understands that businesses may not know the exact legal name or number of a regulation. The key requirement is to be clear and specific about the impact.
- Be Descriptive: Clearly describe the issue (e.g., “The process for obtaining a specialist waste permit”), the regulator involved (if known), and the impact on your business (e.g., “The three-month average delay is causing us to lose £X in contract value”).
- Provide a Solution: Suggest a common-sense reform, such as “a single online portal for all permit applications” or “a process with a guaranteed 30-day decision deadline.”
5. What happens after the deadline of 16 December 2025?
The submission period ends at 11:59 pm on 16 December 2025.
- Evidence Analysis: The Department for Business and Trade will thoroughly analyse all the evidence submitted to identify recurring themes, highly burdensome regulations, and high-impact reform opportunities.
- Developing Reforms: This evidence will be used to develop the next ambitious set of regulatory reforms, forming a pipeline of changes aimed at delivering the remainder of the £5.6 billion savings target.
- Next Steps Publication: The government generally aims to publish a formal response to the evidence received within a few months of the closing date, outlining the new policy direction and legislative plans.