News Archive

• 2007-02-02
  The decline of erudition and the rise of commodity
• 2006-07-14
  UK Ltd spends more on compliance than on paying its people.
• 2006-05-15
  The Future’s Bright – But It’s Not Legal.
• 2006-04-13
  Safety Compliance help is available in spades for UK Businesses.
• 2006-04-01
  The UK Health & Safety Market: Consulting, Training, Advisory, Content and Computing Services is a new Market Report published in April 2006, price £895.
• 2005-11-14
  With the Red Tape tide rising, why are Personal Injury cases, Employment Tribunals and HSE prosecutions dropping?

With the Red Tape tide rising, why are Personal Injury cases, Employment Tribunals and HSE prosecutions dropping?
2005-11-14

The red tape burden on business is higher than ever before and still rising. In the last three years there have been over 100 new statutes and regulations. Each regulation directly affects how staff and safety risks are managed in all sizes of business.

The number of personal injury cases in the county courts (small claims) has fallen from 7660 to 5610 since 1998. An equivalent drop is evident in High Court personal injury cases started, dropping from 1754 to 749. The number of employment tribunals has dropped from 130,408 in 2001 to 86,181 in 2005. HSE and local authority safety prosecutions are also static at around 17,000 per year but conviction rates have dropped from 81.9% in 1997 to 74.3% in 2004. Even the rate of injuries to employees as a percentage of the number of people employed, as reported by the HSE, is dropping (from 567.2 per 100k employees in 1995 to 508.4 in 2004 in the case of injuries causing over 3 days absence).

New research from A.R.K. Business Analysis Ltd, the corporate finance research specialists, has taken a long term view of these market drivers, and concludes that "Regulatory Consultancies are the key - lawyers and insurers have largely missed the boat".

 

Source: Judicial Statistics 1995-2004

"You would expect insurers and lawyers to have made the largest impact in dealing with legal compliance, but the fact is that since the late 90's a small group of legal risk specialist consultancies have made by far the biggest difference" says, David Johnston, CEO of A.R.K.. "Firms like Croner, Peninsula and National Britannia are now £30-40m businesses - big enough to be among the top 50 legal practices in the UK . They offer straight forward legal risk packages for all sizes of company, but already serve many tens of thousand of UK SMEs in particular." Commenting on the contradiction that while red tape is rising, the enforcement actions are dropping, Johnston claims "Regulatory Consultancies are doing a great job. They ensure companies can get on with their core business. These are not ambulance chasers - they have essentially solved the problems that lawyers and insurers couldn't reach. They work as partners for PLCs and outsourcers for SMEs."

A.R.K. Business Analysis Ltd have published research analysing court, tribunal and safety prosecutions from 1995 to date and quantify the market for regulatory consultancies. This market comprises over 40 specialist firms and is now a market of over £250m in sales per year with the potential to reach half a billion in sales by 2010. The market for legal risk services has been growing at over 20% per annum since 1995 and is currently one of the most attractive B2B service markets.

Regulatory Consultancies: Legal Risk Outsourcing in Personnel & Safety is a new Market Report published in November 2005, price £695.

About A.R.K. Business Analysis Ltd. A.R.K. is a specialist corporate finance research business focused on complex B2B service and compliance markets. Their experienced team of analysts are typically senior directors who have built, bought and sold businesses in the markets they compile Market Reports for. A.R.K. have developed a unique market mapping process, and provide research to developing businesses, potential acquirers, bankers and investors. Specialists in legal and regulatory compliance markets, A.R.K. Market Reports have been tracking developments in compliance consulting, content and computing services since 2001.

For further information or an email copy of this press release, please contact: David R Johnston, CEO, A.R.K. Business Analysis Ltd, A.R.K. House, 9 Norris Acre, Hinton-in-the-Hedges, Northants, NN13 5NN; Tel: 01280 843900, Fax 01280 706606, Email dj@arkbusiness.co.uk.

Source: Judicial Statistics 1995-2004

Source: Employment Tribunal Annual Reports 1998-2005

Source: HSE Statistical Reports 1995-2005

Source: HSE Statistical Reports 1995-2005