By Jessica Frank-Keyes The regulatory burden placed on businesses has risen by £6bn a year under the Conservative government, a new report has found. Impact assessments attached to more than 3,500 pieces of legislation over almost a decade have cost firms a gross £35bn a year – with £39.6bn in one-off costs – or up to £57.1bn, with £148bn in one-off costs, if pension reforms were included, the study found. Researchers at the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) looked in-depth at 3,528 items of legislation from 2010 to 2019 to calculate the additional annual regulatory costs. Their report, titled ‘…