Cutting Red Tape - You May Have Heard It All Before and You Would Be Right

22nd October 2025

The UK government's major national programmes and initiatives since 1997 that were explicitly aimed at "cutting red tape" or reducing regulatory and administrative burdens. There haas been at least 9 distinct, named national initiatives (some are agencies or rules rather than one-off campaigns).

Here we go -

Better Regulation Task Force (BRTF) — established 1997
Set out the five principles of better regulation and kicked off the modern "better regulation" agenda in Whitehall.

Better Regulation Commission / Better Regulation Executive (mid-2000s)
The Task Force was replaced by a permanent commission and later the Better Regulation Executive (BRE) to lead/co-ordinate reform across government (BRE formally created c.2005).

Administrative Burdens Reduction Programme (launched c.2005)
Measured administrative burdens and set targets (notably a 25% reduction target by 2010), with departmental "simplification plans" and delivered savings tracking.

Legislative / statutory reform (Legislative & Regulatory Reform Act 2006 and related work)
Legal and institutional changes to embed better-regulation principles and enable simplification/removal of outdated rules. (Background to the regulatory reform programme.)

One-in, One-out (OiOO) — introduced Jan 2011
Cross-government offsetting rule: any new regulatory cost had to be offset by removing existing cost-equivalent rules.

Red Tape Challenge (April 2011)
Public crowdsourcing exercise and online challenge to identify unnecessary regulations and gather proposals for repeal/simplification.

One-in, Two-out (OiTO) — from Jan 2013 (evolution of OiOO)
The offsetting rule was strengthened so each new burden had to be offset by two times the value of removed burdens; later governments have varied the offsetting approach.

Cutting Red Tape programme / sector reviews (c.2015)
Series of sectoral "Cutting Red Tape" reviews (e.g., waste sector, financial red tape reviews) and departmental simplifications forming a named programme of reviews.

Smarter Regulation / Smarter Regulation to Grow the Economy (May 2023 → white paper 2024)
A cross-government "Smarter Regulation" programme and white paper to reduce unnecessary burdens and support innovation (published May 2023 / white paper May 2024).

Regulation Action Plan / Radical Action Plan to cut red tape (March 2025)
Most recent high-profile action plan (March 17, 2025) coordinating regulator reviews, commitments to reduce costs and streamline regulators' duties.

This is a minimum count of national, named programmes. Departments and regulators have run many smaller, sectoral or departmental simplification initiatives that aren't all listed here.

What the evidence shows

Under the One‑in, One‑out / One‑in, Two‑out regime (which required new regulations to be offset by removing others) the independent watchdog Regulatory Policy Committee (RPC) reported net savings to business of about £2.2 billion per year in the 2010-15 Parliament.

Under the Red Tape Challenge, the government announced specific regulatory removals and savings, for example:

Removing or improving 128 of 555 health & care regulations in one review.

In the waste-and-environment area: eliminating 23.5 m paper waste transfer notes and introducing electronic alternatives, saving an estimated £5 million per year for small businesses.

Consolidation of planning regulations: for example a statement that regulations would be reduced "down to 78" from a higher number — a reduction of ~57% in that grouping.

Under the earlier Administrative Burdens Reduction Programme (ABRP) which aimed to reduce business administrative burdens by 25% by 2010:

The National Audit Office (NAO) reported that departments had identified savings of ~£800 million in one year (2007) from that programme.

Businesses' perceptions shifted slightly: e.g., 46% thought regulation was fair/proportionate vs. 39% in 2007. But only 1% of businesses believed compliance time had become easier.
National Audit Office (NAO)

But

The savings figures are often self-reported, or reliant on government estimates rather than fully independent, robust evaluation. For example the NAO flagged that the £800 million figure should be treated with caution as indicative estimates and subject to limited independent validation.

Many of the major burdens removed or simplified were relatively small in number or size; for example one analysis found that "just 15 significant measures generated over 90% of the costs and savings to business" under the OiOO/OiTO regime.

Some reviews find the impact deteriorated over time. The 2023 academic paper in Parliamentary Affairs found that the intensity of burden reduction under the offset regimes declined over time and that many savings were "incidental rather than being motivated by a desire to reduce burden."
OUP Academic

The think-tank Reform (in 2014) argued that while the Red Tape Challenge changed culture in Whitehall, it "didn't actually result in much reduction in regulation, which was the original purpose".

The scope of programmes is limited: for example, the OiOO/OiTO regime excluded many regulations (EU origin, devolved administrations, tax, emergency regulation).

So err
The programmes did achieve some genuine reductions or savings — especially in administrative burdens, paperwork reduction, regulation consolidation and signalling. But they did not deliver massive or wholesale deregulation, and the evidence suggests the impact has been modest, uneven across sectors, and partly symbolic (culture, streamlining) rather than purely quantitative burden elimination.