A permit should not be a test of endurance

Dear members,

This month, the Red Tape Council moved from gathering evidence toward asking a practical question: what would make a permit process predictable for a small business owner who has little spare time, money or staff?

My answer is not a promise that every application will be approved. It is a promise that a person should be able to find the right process, understand what is required, see how long a decision should take and know what happens if the deadline passes.

What moved this month

On 18 March, we issued an open letter to mayors and city executives asking them to publish permit times. It is a modest request, but an important one. A published service time gives applicants something concrete to plan around and gives public offices a clear standard to explain when they cannot meet it.

On 19 March, the Founders Assembly adopted its Rules of Procedure, RC/A/2026/2. That matters to our work because it sets a shared process for turning reports into a proposed fix: test whether a pattern is real, draft a response, consult publicly and put the final proposal to a ballot. The first Fellows were also confirmed. This is the kind of patient institution-building that can keep our recommendations grounded in member experience rather than whoever speaks loudest.

On 23 March, the Red Tape Council filed its first evidence submission, RC/RT/2026/S.1, “The permit clock: evidence from small businesses.” And on 24 March, the Founders Secretariat submitted a response to the UK government’s late-payment consultation. That response concerns a

different problem, but the lesson travels: rules and processes should be judged by what they mean in practice for small firms, not only by how they look on paper.

The numbers behind this work

As of today, Reseated has 302 members in 47 countries and has received 675 reports from 49 countries. The Red Tape Council has 20 members from 13 countries and 23 reports from 13 countries. All 23 Red Tape reports concern permits. Twenty were filed in the last 30 days.

The median amount at stake in those reports is approximately US$6,970. That is not an abstract administrative cost. For an owner, it can be rent, payroll, equipment, a postponed opening or money that cannot be used to keep the business moving. Most Red Tape members who reported their team size work alone or in a team of two to nine. A process that requires several visits, repeated paperwork or weeks of uncertainty lands differently on a person who is also doing the work of an entire office.

The reports so far come from a wide range of places. India accounts for five; Canada and Argentina three each; Brazil and the United States two each. The remaining reports include Singapore, Türkiye and Pakistan. This breadth does not mean every city has the same rules. It does mean that the experience of not knowing what comes next is not confined to one place.

One member’s experience

One member in São Paulo described applying for a local operating permit and being asked to submit a document already included in the application. After resubmitting it, the member could not find a published time for the next review or a clear way to check whether the file was complete. The owner spent working hours following up and held off on a planned opening while waiting for an answer. I am leaving out identifying details because the point is the practice, not the identity of the person or the office.

That account is specific, but the proposed answer is not to single out one office or one official. It is to make the process legible: one place to apply, a checklist that does not change without explanation, a published service time and a way to see where an application stands. When a permit authority misses its own deadline, the applicant should not have to start again just to learn that nothing has happened.

What we are learning

First, a permit delay is often a chain of small uncertainties. Was the application received? Is a document missing? Is the clock running? Who can answer? Each uncertainty consumes time, and the owner usually bears the cost.

Second, measuring a process is part of improving it. The World Bank’s B-READY 2025 findings cover 101 economies and report an average business-readiness score of about 60%; public services scores were around 23% below regulatory framework scores.¹ The gap is a reminder that a sound rule on paper does not guarantee a usable public service in practice.

Third, “one-stop” should mean one reliable route, not simply one website. A digital form that sends applicants to another office, asks them to repeat information or offers no status update has moved the queue online without removing the burden.

Finally, we must be careful with the words “silence is consent.” The idea is that a public authority should not be able to leave a complete application unanswered indefinitely. Any deadline rule needs clear safeguards, notice and a workable way to resolve genuine safety or eligibility concerns. Our aim is accountability and predictability, not automatic approval regardless of the facts.

What comes next

Our next steps are to continue testing the pattern against all five questions: volume, frequency, consistency, spread and corroboration. We will use that work to shape the draft RT-001 Small Business Impact Standard, including its proposed small-business impact test, one-stop digital process, published service times and deadline for permit decisions.

The next Assembly milestone on the calendar is 23 April, when the first Board is due to be elected. Before then, we will keep listening to members and examining what the reports support. Please share cases that explain the steps, waiting time, costs and consequences. Do not include private information you do not want shared; we can learn from the practice without identifying the person or business.

Our work will not be measured by how many recommendations we publish. It will be measured by whether a small-business owner can find the right form, submit it once, see the clock and get an answer in a time they can plan around.

Notes and sources

1. World Bank, B-READY 2025. ↩

Sources

1. World Bank, B-READY 2025