Inspectors Trade Places To Feel Impact of Regulation
27/03/09
Senior company bosses, regulators and business organisations attended the launch of Trading Places - a new initiative from the Local Better Regulation Office (LBRO) to show local authority regulators first-hand how their decisions affect the business they inspect.
By the end of 2009, hundreds of council trading standards, environmental health, licensing and fire safety officers across the UK will have spent two days in branches of major retailers and other companies - finding out the lengths companies must go to in complying with the law.
Officers will spend time talking to company bosses about compliance policy - and will also spend a day on each shop floor, finding out how compliance issues affect day-to-day working in stores and factories.
After the launch at Centre Point in central London on Wednesday March 25, LBRO chairman Clive Grace (front), and (l-r) Graham Jukes (CEO, Chartered Institute of Environmental Health), Ron Gainsford (CEO, Trading Standards Institute and Matthew Fell (Company Affairs Director, CBI) got in on the act themselves - by briefly trading places with checkout staff at the Tottenham Court Road branch of Sainsbury's nearby.
Through Trading Places, the Birmingham-based LBRO, supported by the CBI, British Chambers of Commerce and British Retail Consortium, hopes to improve contact and avoid a "them and us" attitude that suggests regulators are too keen to impose regulation without much concern for the impact on individual businesses.
Clive Grace explained: "To regulate a business effectively, inspectors must understand how it is run. A better understanding can help local authorities to fine-tune their approach because they can better appreciate the consequences of their advice and action.
"Trading Places is about seeing, exploring and learning by doing a few of the many activities that businesses must do to comply with regulations. It's a chance to understand, from bite-size experiences, the essence of a business and its compliance regimes in practice."
At Wednesday's launch, over 65 senior representatives from trade organisations, regulatory bodies, major companies and local authorities heard more about the scheme.
Andrew Miller MP - Chairman of the Regulatory Reform Committee, which examines the legislative burden and promotes better regulation - told the group: "Trading Places is a great idea. It's about working together and understanding each other. Better compliance leads to better results for business and for the consumer. We can really make a difference for everyone."
The CBI is firmly behind the initiative. Representative Matthew Fell told the gathering: "The volume and complexity of regulation causes real headaches for real businesses.
"Mostly companies make huge efforts to abide by the law. All they want is to be told in simple terms what they need to do to stay within the rules of the game. If local enforcement officers understand commercial realities and can offer effective regulatory advice, that can make all the difference."
The scheme is now being rolled-out nationally following a successful pilot in 2008 among major retailers, including Sainsbury's, Tesco, B&Q and Asda. Almost 30 local authority inspectors took part.
LBRO is actively recruiting new businesses from a range of industries to take part in the scheme, giving local authority regulators and policymakers a better understanding of the real-world impact of regulation.
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