Accountants urged into battle.

Accountants and businesses have been told to ‘get their hands dirty’, and step up attempts to challenge the cost of government regulatory initiatives.

According to Baker Tilly head of Business Services and deputy chairman of the Better Regulation Taskforce, Teresa Graham, the profession is in the perfect position to confront the government and tackle issues such as overspending and extended deadlines.

She said: ‘Accountants and businesses have been slow in confronting government initiatives, yet, very often they are the perfect people to carry out these tasks. It is time they started to earn their corn.

‘They are so knowledgeable and can do a lot in terms of monitoring government policy by looking at whether it is working or how much over budget it has gone’.

The call to become more proactive follows on from a spate of late or incomplete government initiatives including the creation of the Small Business Services which began months late. Additionally, the move towards increasing the audit threshold from #1m to #4.8m has been left hanging in mid-air.