Don’t lose contact……Stay in touch…..We`d like to keep you updated
What brought on this rush of emails last month from companies desperate to keep you on their Christmas card list? Simple, the introduction of new European wide legislation `General Data Protection Regulation` or GDPR, that all 5.2 million UK companies were expected to have complied with by 25th May.
Compliance was fairly straightforward, first read the 99 chapters in the act, each one broken down into between 4 and 12 sections and each section into about 30 articles, then panic and start sending out emails to all addresses in your inbox.
Or ignore it and risk fines of up to 20 million euros.
Local businesses may take the view that a million or two in fines may be good value compared to the time involved in complying with more red tape.
Talking of which let`s take a look at corporate UK`s compliance with other recent form filling..
As many as 130,000 UK companies have failed to sign `The People with Significant Control` register, requiring them to detail their ownership – launched in 2016 as part of a “corporate transparency” drive to show who ultimately owns and controls UK companies.
One third have failed to publish `Modern Slavery` statements, and probably failed to check if their suppliers have complied with The Modern Slavery Act, whilst 80% have failed to submit `Gender Pay Gap` Data and some 57,227 are still not complying with measures brought in to counter fraud and money laundering.
On November 1 2010 David Cameron appointed Lord Young as his new ‘enterprise czar’ to slash red tape for firms,18 days later Lord Young resigned after being criticised for remarking that most Britons had “never had it so good”. In 2016 Business Secretary Sajid Javid committed to freeing UK companies from £10 billion of heavy-handed over-regulation, all the legislation above has been introduced since then.