Regulation Review - IPART - NSW Government

3 Identifying reform opportunities
Box 3.3
UK Regulators’ Compliance Code - obligations of the Code:
Economic progress – Regulators should consider the impacts of their regulatory
interventions on economic progress, including considering the costs, effectiveness
and perceptions of fairness of regulation. In particular, regulators should try to ensure
the burdens of their interventions fall fairly and proportionately on small businesses,
given the size and nature of their activities.
Risk assessment – Risk assessment should proceed all regulatory activities,
including data collection, information requirements, inspection programs,
advice/support programs and enforcement/sanctions. Risk assessment involves the
identification and measurement of capacity of harm and an evaluation of the likelihood
of the occurrence of harm. By basing regulatory work on an assessment of the risks
to regulatory outcomes, regulators are able to target resources where they will be
most effective and risk is highest.
Advice and guidance – Regulators should provide general information, advice and
guidance to make it easier to understand and comply with regulation. Advice should
be clear, concise and accessible.
Inspections – Regulators should focus their greatest inspection effort where risk
assessment shows a breach would pose a serious risk to a regulatory outcome and
there is a high likelihood of non-compliance. Burdens of inspections from the same or
different regulators should be minimised through joint or coordinated inspections.
Information requirements – Regulators should undertake an analysis of costs and
benefits of data requests when determining what data they require, and should
consider varying data requests according to risk, reducing frequency of data
collection, obtaining data from other sources and allowing electronic submission.
Duplication of data collection by regulators should be avoided by sharing data.
Compliance and enforcement actions – Regulators should publish an enforcement
policy. In accordance with the Macrory Review, regulators should also:
– measure outcomes not just outputs
– justify their choice of enforcement actions year on year to interested parties
– follow-up enforcement actions where appropriate
– enforce in a transparent manner
– be transparent in the way in which they apply and determine penalties
– avoid perverse incentives that might influence the choice of sanctioning response.
Accountability – Regulators should increase transparency by reporting on outcomes,
costs and perceptions of their enforcement approach.
Sources: Department for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform, Regulators’ Compliance Code: Statutory
Code of Practice for Regulators, 17 December 2007; and Macrory, R, Regulatory Justice: Making Sanctions
Effective, November 2006, p 10.
The BRO has also developed draft elements of good regulatory practice, based on
these principles. These could also be considered as a basis for a compliance code
for NSW regulators (see Box 3.4 below).
Regulation Review IPART 37