Drive to slash pointless rules

FACED with ever-expanding bureaucracy in local councils, the government has created a team tasked with slashing “absurd” and unnecessary rules and regulations.

It is estimated that there are 400,000 texts giving rules on running of councils and also affecting others such as local businesses which work with them.

They include such minutiae as the 2011 “sausage order”, which goes into exhaustive detail on nutritional make-up of school meals, including the fact that maternelle children are allowed one 50g sausage (uncooked weight), élementaire two, and collège or lycée pupils two to three.

Local sporting facilities are also renowned for the number of rules they must conform to – for example the mairie of Mans has been told it can no longer host the top division of regional football matches because suitable venues need two eight square metre dressing rooms for the referees, whereas theirs measure nine and seven.

Former budget minister Alain Lambert, president of the Orne departmental council, and Le Mans mayor Jean-Claude Boulard are heading a team which has been told to come up with a suggested list of regulatory texts to be axed, by March 15. They have already set their sights on the “sausage order”.

“If we manage it, it will create a new will to tackle the problem,” Mr Boulard said.

In the 2012-13 World Economic Forum’s classifications France was placed 126 out of 144 for administrative complexity.

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