The Hampton Report and its Conclusions
By Sandy Nicol
Philip Hampton has published his final report 'Reducing Administrative Burdens: Effective Inspection and
Enforcement', which considers how to reduce administrative burdens on business without compromising the UK's excellent regulatory record.
He concludes that there is much good practice in UK regulation, but also that the system, as a whole:
- is complicated
- good practice is not uniform
- there are overlaps in regulators' activities, which mean there are too many:
excessive forms
- duplicate information requests and
- multiple inspections imposed on businesses.
The review proposes establishing the principle of risk assessment throughout the regulatory system, so that the burden of enforcement and inspection falls mainly on high-risk businesses and least on those with the best records of compliance. Comprehensive risk assessment allied to a streamlined structure of regulators could:
- reduce the need for inspections by up to a third; and
- reduce the number of forms regulators send out by at least 25%.
In addition, the review recommends:
- making much more use of business advice, again applying the principle of risk assessment;
- substantially reducing the need for form-filling and other regulatory information requirements;
- applying tougher and more consistent penalties where these are necessary;
- reducing the number of regulators that businesses have to deal with, by merging 31 national regulators into 7;
- encouraging reform by requiring all new policies & regulations to consider
- enforcement, and use existing structures wherever possible; and
- the creation of a new business-led body at the centre of Government to drive implementation of the recommendations and challenge departments on their regulatory performance.
Finally, the report recommended changes to the complicated regulatory structure by consolidating some national regulators into groups with principle themes, for example the new Consumer and Trading Standards Agency will cover the theme of 'Trading Standards and Consumer Protection'.
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