On average, the amount of time company directors spend each week doing paperwork related to regulatory compliance has gone up from 13 hours a month in 2009 to 17 hours a month in 2010, according to the Institute of Directors (IoD).
In other words, the report continued, a typical director would have to work continuously from 1 January until 9 February to complete their annual administrative burden.
The monetary cost of such duties the IoD estimated to be, when annualised across the number of private enterprises in the UK, £36.8 billion in 2010, up from £28.2 billion in the previous year.
The IoD reached its calculations by quantifiying the working hours that company directors spend each day handling Government regulation and then costing those working hours using remuneration data.
The Business group is urging the Government to speed up its commitment to reduce business regulation, especially in the area of employment law.
Miles Templeman, the director-general of the IoD, said: “Instead of building up their businesses and creating new jobs, the UK’s entrepreneurs are spending over a month each year handling Government red tape. Some of this burden has to be lifted if we want the private sector to grow and create jobs to offset redundancies in the public sector.
“Significant deregulation of employment law must be on the agenda. We know this is contentious, but we’ve reached a point where excessive red tape is stopping many micro-businesses from taking on their first employee. This doesn’t benefit anyone.”
