Small businesses are being denied lucrative public sector contracts because the process of winning them is too bureaucratic, a think tank has suggested.
In the forward to the Small Business Research Trust’s quarterly survey, chairman Brian Wolfe states the public procurement contracts tend to favour companies with extensive resources.
He said the tendency for contracts to favour big companies was exacerbated by the "very bureaucratic nature of the regulation being imposed by the EU".
"Why can't a less onerous procurement procedure for SMEs be adopted by the UK government?" he asked, adding that the UK is, "being driven towards industrial inflexibility by bureaucrats and politicians located in London and Brussels".
Private companies provide billions of pounds worth of services to government and publicly funded groups every year. Contracts range from the supply of essential technologies, to office stationary and food.
The survey of 7,000 respondents covers business sales, investment and employment. It found that the overall trading environment was “stable” for small firms, with most reporting all of the factors neither up, nor down.
