Major businesses to earn recognition and collaborate on regulation
31 January 2011
The Primary Authority scheme, operated by regulatory delivery organisation LBRO, is moving into a new phase to reflect the Government's vision for collaborative regulation, with the emphasis on business playing a greater role.
Inspection plan pilots are being developed with companies such as Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's, Iceland, Moto, Wetherspoon, Argos and Homebase to explore the potential for businesses operating in primary authority partnerships to gain recognition for their compliance activity from local regulators.
Following recommendations made in the recent health and safety report, Commonsense, Common Safety, Flintshire, Central Bedfordshire, Eastleigh Wakefield, Watford, Milton Keynes and Reading councils will be among the first to test how businesses, which have demonstrated their commitment in complying with regulation, can benefit.
Retailers place a high priority on compliance; from ensuring products are safe to preventing sales of age-restricted products to children - the sector spends £20m per year on the latter case alone. However, at present, the same system or products can be inspected by all 433 local authorities, even if their own procedures have been approved by the primary authority.
LBRO Chairman Clive Grace said: "Earned Recognition is a major step forward in building mature relationships that will benefit business, consumers and regulators - a three-way win-win - and Primary Authority is the ideal vehicle to take it forward.
"This is the Big Society in action - businesses taking more responsibility for regulatory compliance in partnership with their local authorities, and everyone enjoying the benefits of doing so.
"It recognises the fact that well run, honest businesses know it is in their interests to comply with regulation. The benefit to the public of this commonsense approach will be the conservation of valuable council resources through better targeted enforcement, and a major shift in regulatory culture towards one where responsibility for positive outcomes is shared by all."
Earned recognition is intended to tap the huge potential for business to run more smoothly and for councils to be able to allocate resources more efficiently, whilst maintaining or enhancing the level of protection to the public and the environment.
The inspection plan pilots were launched at seminars held in December. A second round of seminars is set to be delivered by LBRO on February 2 and 3.
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