GoKawiilIt can be hard running a small business. If you want to sell to a large organisation like the UK Government, there are forms to fill in, checks to comply with, tenders to bid on, and a hundred other things.
Luckily, there's the RM6237 Low Value Purchase System to make everything better. If a department wants to buy something below a certain threshold, they can contact any of the registered suppliers and just buy it. No complicated paperwork, cheaper prices, win-win!
Except, there's on annoying bit of bureaucracy. Every month I have to tell the Government Commercial Agency what business I've done.
Fair enough, I guess. Let them know how many paperclips I've sold to the Ministry of Administrative Affairs.
But there's a wrinkle. What if I've sold nothing? Well, I still have to log on, wait for an MFA code to be send, click through, and report "No Business".
I think that's a waste of time. But I wondered how much time it collectively wastes for the nation's small businesses.
So I filed a Freedom of Information request to see how many people have to sign in to let them know they haven't done any business. They replied quickly - although sent the data as a PDF rather than the requested machine-readable format.
Here's how much of a waste of time it is for everyone:
Date Total Returns Nil Return Percent age Mar-25 768 729 94.9% Apr-25 902 876 97.1% May-25 948 923 97.4% Jun-25 1,322 1,270 96.1% Jul-25 1,406 1,355 96.4% Aug-25 1,369 1,326 96.9% Sep-25 1,416 1,362 96.2% Oct-25 1,610 1,556 96.6% Nov-25 1,713 1,654 96.6% Dec-25 1,645 1,590 96.7% Jan-26 1,536 1,487 96.8% Feb-26 1,588 1,531 96.4%
Even if you assume that it only takes 2 minutes to fill in their form, that's over 2 days worth of time being wasted every month.
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