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Environment regulations under the red tape spotlight Businesses up and down the country are being invited to contribute ideas on how the Government can cut red tape and regulatory burdens without affecting its responsibilities to protect the environment.

For the next three weeks the Red Tape Challenge (RTC) will be focusing on the 287 environmental regulations that apply to businesses, covering issues such as waste, emissions and wildlife protection.

The RTC asks whether existing regulations are providing the environmental protection that is intended and should therefore be retained, or if they are unnecessarily burdensome or redundant and should be scrapped.

People are also being asked for suggestions on how regulations could be simplified to make them easier to follow and more effective, or if an environmental aim could be better achieved through an alternative non-regulatory way. Environmental policies often aim to encourage people to act in certain ways – and overly complex, burdensome regulation may not be the best way to do this.  Simplifying regulations and removing burdens will also benefit the economy by saving businesses millions in unnecessary costs.