It can be hard running a small business. If you want to sell to a large organisation like the UK Government, there are forms to fill in, checks to comply with, tenders to bid on, and a hundred other things.
Luckily, there's the RM6237 Low Value Purchase System to make everything better. If a department wants to buy something below a certain threshold, they can contact any of the registered suppliers and just buy it. No complicated paperwork, cheaper prices, win-win!
Except, there's on annoying bit of bureaucracy. Every month I have to tell the Government Commercial Agency what business I've done.
Fair enough, I guess. Let them know how many paperclips I've sold to the Ministry of Administrative Affairs.
But there's a wrinkle. What if I've sold nothing? Well, I still have to log on, wait for an MFA code to be send, click through, and report "No Business".
I think that's a waste of time. But I wondered how much time it collectively wastes for the nation's small businesses.
So I filed a Freedom of Information request to see how many people have to sign in to let them know they haven't done any business. They replied quickly - although sent the data as a PDF rather than the requested machine-readable format.
Here's how much of a waste of time it is for everyone:
| Date | Total Returns | Nil Return |
Percent
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Mar-25 | 768 | 729 | 94.9% |
| Apr-25 | 902 | 876 | 97.1% |
| May-25 | 948 | 923 | 97.4% |
| Jun-25 | 1,322 | 1,270 | 96.1% |
| Jul-25 | 1,406 | 1,355 | 96.4% |
| Aug-25 | 1,369 | 1,326 | 96.9% |
| Sep-25 | 1,416 | 1,362 | 96.2% |
| Oct-25 | 1,610 | 1,556 | 96.6% |
| Nov-25 | 1,713 | 1,654 | 96.6% |
| Dec-25 | 1,645 | 1,590 | 96.7% |
| Jan-26 | 1,536 | 1,487 | 96.8% |
| Feb-26 | 1,588 | 1,531 | 96.4% |
Even if you assume that it only takes 2 minutes to fill in their form, that's over 2 days worth of time being wasted every month.
At best, 59 small businesses reported that they sold something via RM6237. Well over a thousand businesses are clicking on a button which, frankly, ought not to exist. Why isn't the onus on those buying using the system to report what they've spent and who they spent it with?
After clicking the button, I'm always asked to rate my experience using the service. I FoI'd that data as well but was told:
This information is not held. Feedback scores submitted are anonymised and only available as a service-wide view; consequently, we do not capture or hold results specific to RM6237
So the GCA are wasting everyone's time and do not track how annoying it is.