UK Fuels is urging small businesses to address an admin overload that could be costing the UK economy almost £5 billion every year.

According to the Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR), small businesses waste up to 28 hours each week on dealing with administration and red tape.

If this time was spent on growing the business instead, an extra £4.7bn could be added to the UK economy.

Fleet services provider UK Fuels has challenged businesses that operate vehicles to see how much they can slash the time spent on admin associated with operating their fleet.

Jakes de Kock, group marketing director of UK Fuels, said: “Small business owners typically take up numerous guises in their day-to-day running of the business from manager, accountant, head of HR and even fleet manager.

"This can take a considerable amount of time away from the actual day job and developing new business.

“We’re asking companies with a fleet of two or more vehicles to look at how much time they’re spending on things such as reimbursing driver fuel expenses and claiming back VAT on fuel purchases, and considering what else they could be doing with that time – I suspect most would be looking at how to grow their business.”