Background
In the 2004 Budget, the Chancellor asked Philip Hampton to lead a
review into regulatory inspection and enforcement with a view to
reducing the administrative cost while maintaining effective
regulation. The final report, entitled "Reducing administrative
burdens: effective inspection and enforcement", was published to
coincide with the 2005 Budget.
The Hampton Review
The Hampton Review examines the inspection and
enforcement work of 63 national regulators, as well as the 203
trading standards offices and 408 environmental health offices in
English, Scottish and Welsh local authorities. Although it does not
concern regulators that are the sole responsibility of the devolved
institutions in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, many of the
regulators within the scope of the review operate over the whole of
the UK or Great Britain.
The overall conclusion of the review is that
although there is much good practice in UK regulation, the system
is complicated and good practice is not uniform. It says that an
overlap of regulators has lead to too many forms, information
requests and multiple inspections imposed on businesses. The report
makes 35 recommendations to address these issues.
Among the main recommendations is that a
comprehensive risk assessment should be introduced throughout the
regulatory system, so that inspection rates are reduced for less
risky companies with the best records of compliance, but increased
where necessary for riskier companies. It estimates that the
risk assessment approach could lead to one million fewer
inspections and reduce the number of forms regulators send out by
25 per cent. The report acknowledges the progress made by the
Environment Agency and the HSE, which have published strategy
documents based on risk assessment and are already beginning to
implement the policy.
Another proposal put forward by the review is that
several of the smaller national regulators should be merged to form
large 'thematic bodies'. These smaller regulators currently make up
a large proportion of the total. For instance, of the 63
regulators covered by the review, 31 have fewer than 100 staff. The
report criticises small regulators as being less able to work
together, less aware of the cumulative burdens on businesses, less
efficient and more costly to administer. As a result it
recommends that over the next two to four years, 31 of the 63
national regulators should be consolidated into the following seven
bodies:
- an expanded Environment Agency;
- an expanded Health and Safety Executive;
- an expanded Food Standards Agency;
- a new rural and countryside inspectorate (the new integrated
agency);
- a new animal health inspectorate;
- a new agricultural inspectorate; and
- a new consumer and trading standards agency;
A further recommendation of the report is that
tougher and more consistent penalties should be applied. It says
that there are many instances where the fines imposed are not
sufficient to recoup the gain offenders made by operating
illegally. In order to address this, it recommends that maximum
fines in magistrates' courts should be increased and that
magistrates should have more power to set fines that are an
effective deterrent.
Government response
Gordon Brown responded to the report in his Budget
speech, saying that: "The Government welcomes the final report of
the Hampton Review and accepts its recommendations in full and will
bring forward early legislation to implement them". He laid
out the Government's plans to establish a new Better Regulation
Executive (BRE) in the Cabinet Office to take on the work carried
out by the existing Regulatory Impact Unit and to oversee the
implementation of regulatory reforms.
The full Hampton report is available by
clicking here. This will open PDF in a new window.