On 22 October 2008, the Executive adopted the Policy for Regulation and Enforcement and endorsed its application to all regulatory services of the Council.
The code was issued with the approval of parliament under the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006 (LRRA 2006) (PDF, 143 KB) >> Its broad purpose was to promote efficient and effective approaches to regulatory inspection and enforcement without imposing unnecessary burdens on business.
In essence, the Code expects regulators to adopt positive approaches towards ensuring compliance with the law:
The LRRA 2006 includes two important provisions:
(i) it imposes a duty on any person exercising a specified regulatory function to have regard to the five principles of good regulation. To adhere to the principles, regulatory activities should be carried out in a way which is transparent, accountable, proportionate and consistent and should betargeted only at cases in which action is needed.
(ii) It enables a Minister of the Crown to issue a Code of Practice relating to the exercise of regulatory functions. This is the ‘Regulators Compliance Code’ and where an authority exercises a regulatory function of setting standards or giving general guidance about the exercise of regulatory functions, that authority must have regard to ‘The Code’.
The Policy for Regulation and Enforcement reflects both these legal duties.
Part 1 of The Code sets its overarching aim of promoting a compliance-based approach rather than an enforcement-driven one: A compliance-based approach makes more use of advice and support to encourage compliance with the focus being on helping business to understand & comply with legislation more easily. Enforcement actions should be more proportionate & targeted which should improve outcomes without imposing unnecessary burdens on the regulated.
Part 2 of The Code sets out the seven Hampton principles which frame the specific obligations of the Code
In summary, The Code sets out express provisions in the following areas:
It is important to remember that The Code applies when determining general policy or principles or when setting standards or giving general guidance about the exercise of other regulatory functions. This means that it does not apply to decisions of a direct kind, which actually affect an individual person or group. So, for example, The Code does not apply to the individual, operational-level activities of inspectors, investigators and enforcement officers.
In 2002 the Council signed up to the Enforcement Concordat which embodied the “Principles of Good Enforcement: Policy and Procedure”. This document set out what business and others being regulated, should expect from enforcement officers.
The principles were as follows:
Now, nearly ten years after the Enforcement Concordat was introduced, significant progress has been made to improve approaches to regulatory inspection and enforcement. The Philip Hampton review, established by the Government in 2004, was influential in promoting the new approaches, which included:
When the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, consulted on whether the Regulators Compliance Code should supersede the Enforcement Concordat, the majority of the respondents strongly supported keeping the Concordat alongside the Compliance Code. So, the Compliance Code does not replace the Enforcement Concordat.
Regulators Compliance Code – Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform – 17 December 2007 (PDF, 108KB) >>.
Enforcement Concordat; A Good Practice Guide for England & Wales - Department of Trade & Industry (PDF, 429KB) >>