NEARLY half of all adults in Britain have considered setting up their own business, but one in two of them are too scared of failure to do anything about it, according to a nationwide survey commissioned by Orange Business Services.

The survey of 2,481 adults found that fear of failure is the No 1 barrier to people starting up on their own, followed by a lack of self-confidence.

However, it found that fear diminishes with age, with 43% of 25 to 34-year-olds saying that a fear of failure was holding them back compared with only 37% of people over 55.

Martin Lyne, director of small business at Orange Business Services UK, said: “The biggest discrepancy between entrepreneurial desire and fear of failure is among the young.

“There is a strong case to cultivate an appetite for rational risk in the education system.”

- THE Redtaperants.co.uk website, which was set up to provide a forum for frustrated small-business owners to vent their fury against government legislation and red tape, has been inundated with messages since it was launched two weeks ago.

The site was the brainchild of small-business owner Sylvia Tidy-Harris, based in Leicestershire, who said: “This shows that there are a lot of people out there who are really hurting from red tape.

“From the messages posted, it has become clear that many small-business owners are deliberately curbing the growth of their business because of their fear of red tape.”

One small-business owner, who chose to remain anonymous, wrote: “The legislation is so in favour of the employee and not the employer that it makes you wonder if it is worth it.”

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