Mapping the regulatory toolkit

Project description and aims

The regulatory toolkit is not commonly known or fully understood in its entirety due to rapid changes in regulatory practice and advancements in technology. This project seeks to identify practices used primarily in Europe but also from around the world (through questionnaires & literature search) so that they may be mapped against the compliance spectrum. This will enhance understanding of all regulators enabling them to apply these new tools and practices appropriately in tandem to aid compliance.

All regulators aim to achieve 100% compliance of their regulated sites yet none have achieved this. Traditional practices such as inspection are the backbone of our toolkit but in isolation have failed
to deliver our goal. What additional tools can we use in addition to inspection to achieve utopia? The proposal is to collect examples of practices and map their use to the compliance spectrum to identify where they are thought to be most effective. This will include conventional tools such as inspection, administrative fines and name & shame etc but will also attempt to map as many of the emerging techniques such as voluntary undertakings, prosperity agreements (used in the Northern Ireland Environment Agency etc), name & fame etc. Where available case studies will be given for the tools to show they have been used.

This project will build on the Choosing Appropriate Interventions projects by identifying in a full a picture as possible what the options are.

By understanding what options are available regulators will be able to identify the best range of
tools for the job in hand. It is truly cross-cutting as it applies to all legislation.