Hampton Reviews
The Hampton
Report
In 2004, the Chancellor of the Exchequer asked Philip Hampton, a
leading businessman, to lead a review of regulatory inspection and
enforcement. Philip Hampton’s
2005 report set out an ambitious programme to reduce the
burdens on business created by regulatory systems, together with
principles to guide effective inspection and enforcement, putting
risk assessment at the heart of regulatory assessment, and
intending to encourage a regulatory system which properly balances
protection and prosperity.
The reviews
In 2006, the Chancellor of the Exchequer
invited us to work with the Better Regulation Executive to
follow up progress against the principles set out in the Hampton
Report. The reviews covered five of the biggest regulators – the
Environment Agency, Financial Services Authority, Food Standards
Agency, Health and Safety Executive and the Office of Fair Trading
(OFT).
The reviews were carried out, over Summer and
Autumn 2007, by four-person review teams comprising independent
experts and officials drawn from a number of regulators, the Better
Regulation Executive and the NAO. Review teams’ reports were
published in March 2008.
The compendium report
In July 2008 we published a compendium report,
Regulatory
quality: How regulators are implementing the Hampton vision,
which drew out the common themes from the five separate reviews. It
also sought to highlight good practice amongst the regulators.
Common challenges
In drawing together the information gathered
through the individual assessments we have been able to identify
some of the common problems and challenges that regulators have to
deal with to become fully risk-based, consistent, proportionate and
effective organisations. These challenges can present a range of
managerial, intellectual and resource issues which are not
necessarily simple to solve. The practical challenges facing the
regulators were:
- to understand the effectiveness of their activities better – to
inform strategic thinking on striking the right balance between
inspection and enforcement activity and other means of achieving
compliance;
- to develop a coherent, business-friendly, evidence based
strategy for advice and guidance, and to improve the reach and
effectiveness of guidance, particularly for small firms;
- to improve their engagement with local authorities,
particularly where local authorities are an integral part of the
regulatory structure, to deliver a coordinated and consistent
system of regulation based on a shared understanding of risk and
mutual respect;
- to use intelligence well, to improve risk assessment and the
allocation of regulatory effort;
- to identify common ground and build trust with business
organisations and trade associations: to draw on their experience,
use their resources to target messages and find new ways of
encouraging compliance;
- to allow for local discretion, the use of inspectors’ judgement
and innovation, but still deliver consistent, outcome-focused
inspection and enforcement;
- to share knowledge better, both internally and with other
regulators – to capture what works; and
- to develop a comprehensive risk assessment system which can
deal with a wider range of risks both high level and firm-specific
so as to inform judgements about the application of resources to
different areas of risk.
More information on our work on Hampton,
including our methodology and all of the reports, is available on
our About Regulation page.