Small businesses owners spend an average of two days every month dealing with health and safety regulations, according to research unveiled by the Forum of Private Business.

The lobby group found that 47% of small firms polled said they spent more than seven hours a month on such issues, while 19% spent anywhere between one day and a whole week.

Over half those firms (56%) said they found health and safety regulations time-consuming, while 64% claimed the amount of time they spent on the rules was disproportionate to the benefits or need for the regulation.

“These findings show that owner/managers not only feel that health and safety form-filling is extremely time-consuming, but also that keeping up-to-date and understanding changes is also a burden,” said Nick Goulding, chief executive of the FPB. “The amount of time spent on these areas replaces the time spent on supervision, which could have a greater impact on safety.”

One respondent – Phillip Alison, managing director of bed and furntiture-filling manufacturer Enkev Natural Fibres – believes companies will inevitably slip up because of the weight of red tape they face.

“The amount of regulations that small businesses have to adhere to has made it virtually impossible to keep up-to-date with the many changes that are being made,” he said. “But, more importantly, because of the amount of regulations, small businesses are going to fall foul of them sooner rather than later.”

Many new regulations are due to come into effect on 6^th April, including changes to the Construction Design Management Regulations (CDM), which the FPB claims will force new responsibilities on to smaller companies before having building work carried out.

“We must have simplified regulations, greater clarity to encourage understanding and allow smaller businesses to implement them with greater ease,” said Goulding. “The size of companies must be a consideration when new regulations are proposed.

“In the case of CDM, many small businesses will be totally unaware of the new responsibilities they will be asked to assume and we would call for a rethink while the potential impact is assessed,” he added.