The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) have announced plans to change the way businesses experience inspections.
Over the summer BIS consulted on regulatory enforcement and the future of the Local Better Regulation Office, and enforcement was also a subject area on the Red Tape Challenge. The aim was to get first-hand views from businesses on where reform of enforcement was needed and where the state's methods of enforcing regulation could be lightened, as well as understanding better what works well in order to build on this. In general, while there was evidence of good practice the consultation responses showed there are too many areas where the enforcement of regulation is heavy-handed, inefficient and overly prescriptive.
Therefore Government have set out the following plans for a change in the way regulation is enforced:
A different and more mature relationship with business:
- A review of all regulators, not just to examine the case for continued existence, but to make sure each one is making the fullest possible use of alternatives to conventional enforcement methods
- There will be an assumption that co-regulation be introduced wherever this is practical. This is where businesses and others are involved - co-designing enforcement strategies with the regulator, using certification or accreditation so as to tailor regulation with the business in mind, rather than the state
- Making greater use of earned recognition so that compliant businesses are subject to fewer inspections and unnecessary regulatory action
- Working with business, through local enterprise partnerships and local authorities to promote better local regulation.
- There should be a presumption that regulators should help businesses comply with the law
- Government will also establish the principle that no business will face a sanction for simply having asked a regulatory authority for advice
A transparent and light touch risk-based system
- New partnership between Government, regulators and businesses at the heart of the regulatory system, bringing the expertise of the Local Better Regulation Office into Government. The LBRO, will transfer into BIS to feed more directly into the policy making process and will be renamed the Better Regulation Delivery Office. It will work with businesses and regulators to provide, clear, impartial advice to drive improvements in local regulation
- Extension of the Primary Authority Scheme to allow more organisations, such as small businesses to benefit.
Ending the tick box approach to inspection, freeing up productive business time and resource
- Sunset clauses on new statutory regulators created in the future to prevent the proliferation of new regulatory bodies, ensuring that they are regularly reviewed and if no longer needed, removed
- Give a higher profile to the Regulators compliance code. Regulators will be asked to give the code more prominence in their publications and websites in the hope that increased awareness of the code will fulfil its potential as a means of holding regulators to account for business
The NFU are encouraged that BIS have recognised that there are many areas where regulation is heavy handed, inefficient and overly prescriptive, impacting on business time and resources. Accountability, transparency and the need to recognise the efforts of business to comply with the law are themes that run throughout the Government plans and are on the same lines as the recommendations put forward by the Farming Regulation Task Force. The plans on earned recognition clearly echo the recommendations and are a key concept of the Macdonald report. It is only right that those who consistently comply with regulations are classed as lower risk and compliance efforts should focus on those who deliberately flout the law and the 'poor' performing businesses. A further recommendation in the Macdonald report was to tackle the duplication and overlap that exists between local authority and national regulators. The NFU are working with national regulators and the LBRO to take this forward but Government plans to conduct reviews of all regulators will also help to identify potential duplication and overlap. We hope that taken together the plans put forward by BIS and the on-going work through the Macdonald recommendations will help change the culture of regulatory enforcement.
No comments have been made.