Comment: Government should give us a break from rulings

Dec 18 2008 by Phil Renton for The Journal

WHEN everything in the garden is rosy, business leaders know they have to take non-core issues in their stride, deal with them and not act like ostriches.

When times are tough it becomes increasingly difficult to grin and bear it. Just this week I had a phone call from a lady asking where I was with corporate social responsibility.

My excellent health and safety manager sent me an e-mail keeping me up to date with legislative changes which informed me that lower courts, not just Crown Courts, can now impose £20,000 fines and have the option of imprisonment for breaches of H&S rules.

To round down the week the icing on the cake came my way via an IT industry magazine which informed me that Brussels had produced a series of changes to the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive [RoHS] which, if approved, would impose further costs to our business. Please don’t take this the wrong way as I firmly believe that reducing the use of mercury and cadmium in the technology supply chain is an admirable objective. However, I think common sense should prevail regarding launch dates of improved initiatives.

If adopted, the new proposals will form part of the wider CE marking process which in turn will involve the Trading Standards to police it and National Weights and Measures will take responsibility for tracking down RoHS violators.

When a previous deadline was set regarding RoHS, it resulted in panic selling and product shortages as vendors flooded the channel with non-compliant kit at the last minute with the knock-on effect of destabilising prices.

What would be a wonderful gesture by the Government during such testing times as these, where our prime focus is the security of our employees’ jobs, is to give business leaders a holiday from legislative changes and allow us to put all our energies into steering our ships through the choppiest waves in years.

Having said all that, it will probably take 18 months for the proposed changes to take full effect.

It doesn’t matter how bad things are; it’s Christmas, forget your problems and have a good time.

Phil Renton is managing director of Croft Technology.