We live in a time of shrinking government; fewer civil servants and fewer resources to meet greater challenges. In short, we are being asked to do more for less.
Since 2007, the Better Regulation Delivery Office has been helping local authorities do just this, with various initiatives designed to help regulators to be better allies of business while finding more efficient ways to secure compliance and enhanced outcomes for the public.
Policy-makers can learn from the experience of the frontline officers in local authorities who have to ensure compliance with fewer resources.
Given the events of 2008 and the financial retrenchment of the following years, our thoughts throughout government are more focused, not just on how we spend but also on where that money comes from and on the impact of our policies.
Where, once, policymakers might have left others to worry about their impact on business - the engine that creates wealth that pays for public services – they must now be more mindful of the impact that implementation has on business growth.
A case in point is the legislation on banning smoking in workplaces (effective in England from July 2007). The assumption was that businesses would have to be forced to comply; that this would be enforced by local authority inspectors; and money was allocated for dealing with non-compliance.
In effect, what happened was that local authority inspectors foresaw the potential impact this wide-ranging law would have and engaged with their business communities beforehand to discuss what practical measures could ensure compliance whilst minimising the impact on a business – for instance, smoking shelters outside pubs and restaurants.
A second example is the government’s response (2014) to the Elliott Review, which followed the scandal regarding the contamination of meat products. Instead of a rush to legislate in this critical sector, among the actions it undertook, a key one was to ensure better intelligence sharing between the food industry and government, and to support industry so that food businesses know and can trust their supply chain.
One initiative highlighted in the report was Primary Authority, a partnership approach between local authority regulators and businesses which supports around 800 food companies operating at tens of thousands of locations throughout the country, including supermarkets, manufacturers and importers, large and small.
The report states: “This successful scheme means that these regulators are well placed to quickly identify and share vital food fraud information with other local authorities and the FSA, as well as co-ordinate enforcement effort around the country. This enables better targeting of resources to where they are most needed and helps simplify inspections for those food businesses which can demonstrate a good track record of compliance with food law.”
Such is the importance we place on the Primary Authority approach that we have negotiated agreement with the Reducing Regulation Cabinet sub-Committee that mindfulness of the scheme should be a condition of policy clearance.
Outside of policy-making, in terms of regulators’ activities, we have been similarly eager to persuade colleagues about the Growth Duty, which requires that economic growth be taken into account alongside regulators’ other statutory duties, without compromising public protections. The purpose of the duty is for economic growth to be a factor in regulators’ decision-making, and for regulators to be transparent and accountable for this.
Another good example of an alternative approach is the Food Standard Agency’s Safer Food, Better Business, in which training rather than inspection is the answer. This has been the route to improved standards and compliance with food hygiene legislation, which requires caterers to have a documented food safety management system.
Safer Food, Better Business was developed by the Food Standards Agency to help small food businesses comply with the requirement to have documented Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points-based procedures. The Agency produced a range of SFBB packs for small caterers and retailers and an interactive DVD guide in 16 languages. All the operator has to do is complete the ‘safe methods’ in the pack and tailor them to their particular business.
These examples illustrate that legislation alone is unlikely to achieve policy goals; effective implementation is essential. On the other hand, we shouldn’t assume that legislation is always required – nudges, cajoling and incentives can also be effective. To quote from the Civil Service Reform Plan (June 2012), “Implementing policy should never be separate from making it”.