Open Letter to Licensing Boards on Silence‑is‑Consent Deadlines

From: Edna Assunção, Chair, Red Tape Council, São Paulo, Brazil; Rapporteur, Red Tape Council

To: Chairs, chief executives, registrars and responsible officials of licensing boards and regulatory agencies

Dear licensing-board and regulatory-agency leaders,

We write on behalf of the Red Tape Council of Reseated’s Founders Assembly, a global assembly of small-business owners. Our Council examines recurring administrative barriers reported by members and develops practical standards for public consultation and Assembly decision. We address you as officials responsible for systems that determine whether a person may open, operate, expand or continue a business.

This is an open letter about a specific administrative problem: an applicant who has submitted the required material, but cannot learn when a decision will come, what is holding it up, or what happens if the authority does not respond. We ask licensing boards and regulators to publish service times and to establish a clear deadline for decisions. Where the governing law permits and the risk profile makes it appropriate, we ask you to consider a silence-is-consent rule: if the authority has not acted by the published deadline, a complete application is treated as approved, subject to stated safeguards and exceptions.

We do not suggest that every licence should be granted automatically, or that public authorities should disregard safety, environmental, consumer or other legitimate protections. A deadline is not a substitute for assessment. It is a means of making the assessment timely, visible and accountable.

Where automatic approval would be unlawful or unsuitable, an authority can still publish a service standard, explain delays and provide a definite next step.

Who we are and what we are asking

Reseated launched on 10 February 2026. It is a nonprofit, organized as seven councils of small-business owners. The Red Tape Council’s agenda includes the proposal known as RT-001, the Small Business Impact Standard. That proposal calls for a small-business impact test for new rules affecting businesses, a one-stop digital process, published service times and a silence-is-consent deadline for permits.

Our work follows a public process. Reports are examined against five tests: volume, frequency, consistency, spread and corroboration. A draft fix then goes to public consultation and an Assembly ballot. This letter does not represent a completed adoption ballot on RT-001. It is a Council communication grounded in the evidence available on its date and intended to invite practical engagement from the authorities that administer licensing.

Our request is not that every board adopt an identical rule. We ask each authority to review its own licensing processes and, within its lawful mandate, take the following steps:

1. Publish a service time for each material permit or licence process, including the point from which the clock runs and the circumstances in which it may pause.

2. Provide a single, accessible route for applicants to submit materials, see the status of an application and receive notices of missing information or decisions.

3. Set and publish a decision deadline. Where the authority has legal power and the permit’s risk permits, provide that a complete application is approved if the authority misses that deadline, subject to clear exclusions and safeguards.

4. Where silence cannot lawfully or safely constitute approval, require a reasoned status notice before the deadline and a definite next decision date, with a route to escalate avoidable delay.

5. Publish aggregate performance information, including processing times, overdue cases, requests for additional materials and outcomes under any deadline rule.

Evidence available on 5 August 2026

As of 5 August 2026, the Red Tape Council had 89 members in 35 countries. It had received 174 reports from 40 countries. The median amount at stake in those reports was approximately US$4,352. The reported situation category was permits in all 174 cases. The records identify the administrative situation; they do not provide a dependable breakdown by the applicant’s industry or by the type of licensing board involved. We therefore do not claim that the reports represent particular economic sectors, and we do not infer a sector distribution from them.

The reports came from a geographically varied set of countries. The largest country totals were the United States, 30; India, 18; Brazil, 15; Canada, 9; the United Kingdom, 9; Germany, 7; Nigeria, 6; and Italy, 6. The remaining reports came from other countries in the 40-country total. These figures describe submissions to a member assembly; they are not national estimates, population-adjusted rates or a ranking of regulatory systems.

Members also reported the size of their teams. The reported categories were: just me, 43%; 2–9 people, 36%; 10–49 people, 17%; and 50–249 people, 5%. The percentages are reported as supplied and may not total 100% because of rounding. In the 30 days before the data date, the Council received 45 reports. That recent flow is relevant to the Council’s continuing review, but it should not be read as a forecast or as proof that every report concerns the same cause.

The evidence has limits. The report count is not a count of all permit applications, and a member’s reported amount at stake is not an independently audited loss. The Council has not been given a complete administrative dataset from any licensing authority that would permit direct comparison of statutory service times with actual processing times. We publish these limitations because a useful reform should be based on a fair account of what is known and what is not.

The wider international context points to the importance of administrative services. The World Bank’s B-READY 2025 findings covered 101 economies and reported an average of about 60% on its business-readiness measure. Its public-services scores were about 23% below its regulatory-framework scores. These are cross-economy indicators, not a measure of permit delay in any one jurisdiction, and they do not establish that a particular licensing board is performing poorly. They do support examining the practical delivery of public services alongside the rules on the books.¹

Why a published deadline matters

A business can plan around a known requirement, even when the requirement is demanding. It cannot plan reliably around an application that remains pending without a visible clock or a meaningful update. Uncertainty can delay a lease, a hiring decision, a purchase of equipment or the start of trading. For a small firm, an unresolved application may also tie up cash that could otherwise support ordinary operations. Our evidence records the amount members say is at stake; it does not establish a uniform financial consequence for every applicant.

A published service time helps applicants understand what the authority undertakes to do and helps the authority identify where its process is failing. A deadline can reduce the incentive to leave a complete file unattended, make delays visible to managers and give applicants a predictable point at which to seek assistance. A single digital process can also reduce repeated submissions, inconsistent status checks and uncertainty about whether a document was received.

Silence-is-consent is one possible consequence for a missed deadline, not a universal answer. It may be inappropriate where a permit concerns a serious and immediate risk, where an inspection is legally required, where the applicant has not provided required information, or where a decision would affect third-party rights. It may also be unavailable under the authority’s existing legal powers. A well-designed policy should identify these circumstances in advance, not leave applicants to discover them after a deadline has passed.

Where automatic approval is excluded, silence should still not mean indefinite uncertainty. An authority can commit to notify an applicant before the deadline if a case needs more time, state the reason and the outstanding step, and specify the revised date. Such a notice should not become a routine mechanism for extending every application without explanation. Published statistics on extensions and overdue cases can show whether the service standard is meaningful in practice.

Legal and policy context

This letter is addressed across jurisdictions. The Council has not been provided with a common legal framework governing licensing boards and regulators in all recipient jurisdictions, and we do not presume that a board has authority to deem an application approved. The legal basis, available remedies, public-interest duties and permissible exceptions differ by jurisdiction and by permit. We therefore ask each recipient to assess these proposals under the laws and duties applicable to that recipient.

Where existing law authorizes a deemed decision or allows the authority to establish one, we invite you to consider whether a silence-is-consent deadline can be introduced for suitable classes of application. Where legislation must change, we ask you to identify the needed change to the responsible lawmaking authority and to publish the practical evidence supporting it. Where automatic approval is not available, the other requests in this letter—service times, a one-stop process, timely notices and performance

reporting—remain actionable subjects for administrative review, to the extent permitted by law.

We do not ask officials to express support for a proposal before reviewing its legal and operational consequences. Nor do we attribute a position to any board, regulator, government or official. We invite recipients to state what authority they have, which processes they consider suitable for a deadline and what safeguards they believe are necessary.

Requests to licensing boards and regulators

We respectfully ask each recipient to take the following actions, or to identify the responsible office if another authority must act:

1. Map the process. Identify the major permits and licences affecting small businesses, the documents required, the responsible decision-maker and any external step that must occur before a decision.

2. Publish service times. State the expected time for an initial completeness check and for a final decision. Define when the clock starts, how applicants are told that an application is incomplete, which events pause the clock and how a pause ends.

3. Offer one clear route. Provide a single point, digital where practicable and accessible through alternatives where needed, for submission, payment, status updates, requests for information and delivery of decisions. Applicants should not have to guess which office holds their file.

4. Adopt deadlines with suitable consequences. Review whether a missed deadline can result in approval for defined low-risk or otherwise suitable applications. If it can, publish the legal basis, scope, exclusions, notice process and any conditions that apply. If it cannot, provide a timely reasoned notice and a firm next date instead of leaving the case unanswered.

5. Protect necessary safeguards. Specify how the process handles incomplete applications, inspections, urgent risks, fraud concerns and matters requiring another authority’s input. An exception should be clear, proportionate and visible to the applicant.

6. Measure actual performance. Publish periodic aggregate information on applications received, completed, withdrawn and pending; processing-time ranges; overdue cases; extensions; and the use and outcome of any deemed-approval rule. Explain any changes in definitions so results remain interpretable.

7. Test the process with small firms. Invite applicants, including sole operators and firms with small teams, to identify unclear forms, duplicated requests and avoidable waiting points. Protect personal and commercially sensitive information in that engagement.

8. Review the rule after implementation. Set a review date and examine whether deadlines improve predictability without weakening necessary protections. Amend the scope or safeguards where evidence shows that the rule is not working as intended.

Offer of anonymized evidence

The Red Tape Council is prepared to discuss its evidence and, subject to member consent, data protection and appropriate safeguards, offer anonymized and aggregated information that may assist a recipient’s review. We will not identify members or their businesses without permission. Our members are anonymous unless they choose a public seat, and their reports are not authorization to disclose a person’s identity or commercially sensitive details.

Any data-sharing should have a defined purpose and a clear description of what information is requested, who will access it, how it will be protected and whether it will be published. We can discuss the questions that the existing records can answer and those they cannot. In particular, the current Council data does not support a sector-by-sector estimate of permit

delay. If a recipient wishes to understand sector differences, we would welcome discussion of a voluntary, privacy-conscious way to collect that information without implying that the present reports already provide it.

We also welcome a written response identifying the office responsible for permit-service standards, the authority’s current published times, and any legal or operational barrier to the requests above. A response need not endorse silence-is-consent in order to be useful. A clear explanation of what can be changed administratively, what requires legislation and what evidence would inform a review would help applicants and public officials alike.

Conclusion

Small businesses should not have to treat an unanswered application as an open-ended condition of doing business. A transparent process gives an applicant a date, a route to check progress and an explanation when the authority cannot decide on time. A lawful silence-is-consent rule can provide a stronger consequence in suitable cases; where it is not available, a published deadline and a reasoned, time-bound update are still practical improvements.

Annex: Sources and evidence basis

1. Red Tape Council data as of 5 August 2026: members, reports, country totals, reported amount at stake, permit category, team-size categories and reports in the preceding 30 days. Internal Council data; figures are stated in the body of this letter.
2. World Bank, B-READY 2025 findings. The cited cross-economy figures are contextual and are not presented as permit-specific findings for any recipient jurisdiction.

Notes and sources

1. World Bank, B-READY 2025 findings, published 2025. The comparison in this letter is limited to the 101-economy edition described in the cited material. ↩

Sources

1. World Bank, B-READY 2025 findings