Tangled up in red tape

Too much red tape - a complaint of many businesses

By Working Lunch's Rob Pittam

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Have you ever thought about who actually makes traffic cones?

There are millions of them. Must be a good little earner for somebody.

And when there's any flooding all these sandbags suddenly appear.

How many people make a living out of stitching them together?

Then there's red tape. We know it's taken on a meaning of its own, but there's actually a company making it.

I know because I've been there.

Ironic

It's called Concorde Tape Solutions and it's based near Bradford in west Yorkshire.

The tape has many applications

And by the most delicious of ironies, you've never come across a business so badly affected by - red tape.

First of all, what's it used for?

Concorde do spooling and printing for a variety of packaging applications, many of them for the food industry.

For instance, they process sealing tapes for loaves of bread.

More specialist applications include non-adhesive tape for nappies.

We want to produce red tape, not be buried by an avalanche of red tape

John Murphy
Concorde Tape Solutions

And it does come in other colours apart from red.

Concorde started in a living room 20 years ago. Now it has a turnover of more than £3m.

But it is becoming increasingly concerned that the amount of bureaucracy it has to deal with is stifling the growth of the business.

Culprit

"We are just getting bogged down by this plethora of paperwork and we really feel we have had enough," says managing director John Murphy.

He estimates the company is spending £50,000 a year on bureaucracy, money he would rather use to sell and promote the products.

John Murphy: Buried under an avalanche

One of the biggest culprits is the Valpak compliance scheme which helps packaging firms meet European regulations.

Concorde says it spends about £6,000 a year filling in the required forms.

It also has to process forms sent in by its customers.

One document had 34 pages - this for a client who provides business worth just £2,000.

"We are not against legislation, but it has to be well thought out, well-managed and it also has to be as concise as possible," says sales director Andy Casson.

Workload

He cites one client which is spending weeks every year on form-filling.

Andy accepts the need for legislation to govern health and safety and quality control, but says compliance with European directives is what's really adding to the workload.

"Each one individually might seem a fairly small amount of work, but put together it's a mass of work," he explains.

Concorde are certainly not the first small business to complain about bureaucracy - they definitely won't be the last.

But if any company deserves to have its voice heard, surely it's the one which actually makes red tape.