What is government doing to small business?  In some respects it does too little, and in others too much.

Having had my own small businesses I know that the best thing government can do is to leave it alone, and not burden it with an average of 7 hours of paperwork a week just to comply with government regulations.

Just think what an entrepreneur could do with those 7 hours!  Market and develop their products, sell more, improve staff efficiency …. maybe even get a life!

Of course regulation can help as well as hinder.  It should create an even playing field for companies to compete for business fairly.  It should protect the business and the consumer.

But there seems to me a large gap between the government strap-line they love to use ‘think small first’ and the reality.  Why should small businesses be faced with a string of inspectors trudging to their door with a ‘tick box’ mentality?  Why can’t they advise on a whole range of issues rather than try and catch you out?

And why can’t the government, using our taxes, buy services from small businesses as well as large ones?  Every Local Authority should sign up to the Small Business Friendly Concordat.  That’s a commitment to look at their procurement practises to ensure they’re helping, not hindering small businesses to be able to tender for council contracts.

In his budget, Mr Darling made a commitment to ‘look at’ a target of 30% of public procurement coming from small and medium-sized business.  That would involve a large culture change on the part of civil servants who are currently feted by companies who promise to make supply simple and easy for them.  They’ll have to get out of their comfort zone, put themselves in the place of the small business suppler and their own customers and work harder to make their suppliers look more like the people they actually serve.

And while we’re talking about comfort zones, why not get the civil servants who write the regulations out from behind their desks and go spend some time in the REAL world?

To be fair, this has already happened in a limited way, but it remains my not-so-secret fantasy to give them a taste of their own medicine.  Then we might get regulations in simple, straightforward and workable.  Ah well, a girl can always dream.