The level of red tape is rising, costing UK businesses billions of pounds each year.

The British Chambers of Commerce has calculated that the cost, since 1998, of the 69 regulations that have significant business burden (out of 1,400 regulatory impact assessments undertaken by the government) has risen from 拢10bn in 2001 to a staggering 拢50.3bn in 2005, a five-fold increase (see graph).

The government aims to keep the burden of regulation down by reducing and simplifying bureaucracy, yet the regulations to simplify the taxation of pensions, introduced in 2006, has cost businesses 拢178m! The Employment Act introduced in 2002 had, by 2006, cost business 拢864m.

The Better Regulation Task Force, now known as the Better Regulation Commission, has completely failed to make any impact. The Commission鈥檚 role is 鈥渢o provide independent advice to government, from business and other external stakeholders, about new regulatory proposals and about the Government鈥檚 overall regulatory performance.鈥� The great thing about having independent advice is that it can be (and often is) ignored.

The UK construction industry has an annual output of 拢108bn, which means if the cost of red tape is just 2% of output, then it is costing us a staggering 拢2bn! Many forms are lengthy, complicated and full of jargon. Nobody has thought about the balance between the costs and the value of providing the information.

The Americans are good at red tape too, but at least they have a way of letting you know how much bureaucracy is involved in the form being completed. Their green visa waiver form tells you how long it will take you to understand the form and how long it will take to complete. Perhaps all our forms should have a health warning. Better still, many of them could be eradicated altogether or at least the government could adopt a 鈥渙ne in - one out鈥� policy.

We have no monopoly on red tape but we seem to excel at it. Perhaps we ought to make an Olympic event out of it for 2012, then we would be certain to win some gold medals.

Roger Flanagan, the president, and I would like to focus on the unnecessary burdens placed on the construction industry by the bureaucracy and red tape which seems to roll out daily. If you have any examples, send them to us at redtape@ciob.org.uk so we can identify the worst. Enough is enough.

Chris Blythe is chief executive of the Chartered Institute of 黑洞社区

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Construction Manager