Around 3,000 bosses of small businesses in North Yorkshire have been asked for examples of red tape they want to see snipped.

The plea for more information has come in a letter from the North Yorkshire branch of the Federation of Small Businesses which is compiling a "red tape file."

The organisation plans to send the dossier to the government's new small business champion.

The Federation's policy chairman, Brendan Burns, has already complained to David Irwin, the new chief executive of the Small Business Service about the "increasing regulatory burden that has impacted on small businesses in recent months."

Mr Burns wrote: "The majority of FSB members are owner-managers of firms that are too small to have separate personnel departments to deal with government paperwork."

The Federation has included North Yorkshire members among 150,000 nationally in its letterdrop asking which individual pieces of legislation pose particular problems for them.

The result will be analysed and presented both to Mr Irwin and cabinet "enforcer" Mo Mowlam, whose newly-formed "star chamber" on regulation meets later this year.

Meanwhile, the Federation is urging Mr Irwin to direct resources of the Small Business Service amounting to around £200 million at up-and-running small firms rather than concentrating on funding start-ups, one in three of whom will fail in their first year.

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