WEEE regulations

For the past couple of weeks I have been reading various reports that a significant majority of SME businesses are unable to describe what the WEEE regulations are without prompting.

Hmmm! I have to ask myself why that might be; and whereas the reports that I have read seem to suggest that this means that these smaller businesses are missing out (which of course they will be!) they also seem to imply that it may be a fault of those smaller businesses for not being fully briefed.

Given that the government itself has come to acknowledge the burden of regulation on smaller businesses - in terms of assimilation, understanding as well as execution of the requirements - it seems to me that if only 1 in 8 SMEs are aware of the WEEE rgulations, then that is the fault of those who have produced the regulations and not the SMEs. I am minded of the old adage "the teacher has not taught until the pupil has learned".

Perhaps it would help if the nation were better served by national trade bodies for concise sectors - such as I mentioned in "The Alternative View" in this very blog on 27 January. Whatever the solution, it must not be placed upon the already burdened shoulders of small business.