Running a business while raising a family is a balancing act in itself.

At PBC, one thing we hear regularly from small business owners is just how much time gets swallowed up by admin. When you’re running a small business, you’re often doing everything yourself finding customers, managing cash flow, delivering the work, keeping on top of invoices, marketing, and then trying to make sense of reporting and compliance on top of it all.

That’s why the Government’s latest proposals to simplify corporate reporting for SMEs caught our attention.

The proposals include simpler reporting requirements, wider audit exemptions for some medium-sized businesses, more digital-first reporting, and exploring how AI could help make compliance more efficient. The Government estimates its wider reforms could save UK businesses more than £450 million a year. For us, the important question is what this could mean in practice.

If smaller businesses can spend less time dealing with unnecessary administration, that potentially means more time to focus on the things that actually move a business forward - customers, sales, improving services, building a team and planning for growth. That is exactly the kind of challenge we work through with businesses every day at PBC. The consultation is now open until 30 November 2026, and we’ll be keeping an eye on how the proposals develop and what they could mean for the businesses we support.

💬 For the business owners in our community: what takes up more of your time than it should?

Admin? Finance? Marketing? Finding customers? Something else?

We’d be interested to hear what the biggest pressure is for you right now.