RAIL TRANSPORT ANNOUNCEMENT

The Minister of State for Transport Theresa Villiers has announced the results of the Rail Transport Red Tape Challenge theme. Rail Transport regulations were live in the spotlight between 10 November and 19 December – and received just under 700 comments. The Department for Transport placed 198 regulations online for your views having already identified a further 23 regulations already lapsed. Overall, it is proposed to scrap or improve 40% of these 221, following a vigorous process of challenge.

Plans include:

• harmonising and simplifying the process for obtaining an operating licence by providing a one-stop-shop for applicants, to give more flexibility in how applications are made and reduce duplication by consolidating different regimes;
• streamlining the process for amending penalty fares to give more flexibility and save the industry money by helping to reduce the estimated £180 million lost through fare evasion every year;
• reviewing the railway closure processes to ensure these are fit for purpose and consider deregulatory options;
• removing regulatory burdens and costs on historic cableways by reducing the time and cost associated with formal authorisation processes designed for new installations;
• merging a number of regulations to make them easier to understand; and
• removing a significant number of lapsed or redundant regulations.

The regulatory regime for our railways has traditionally been focussed on ensuring the safe and efficient running of the system rather than imposing regulatory burdens.

Although over fifty per cent of rail regulations are therefore already deregulatory in nature or impose no regulatory burdens or costs, additional potential to deregulate has nevertheless been sought wherever this exists.

These outcomes form part of the wider efforts of Government to improve the railways by reducing micro-management through a franchise reform programme and the proposals in the Department for Transport’s Command Paper “Reforming our Railways: Putting the Customer First”.

Relevant Links

A spreadsheet of the regulations, showing which ones the Government is proposing to change is available here, together with a detailed outcome report here.

The Written Statement from the Minister of State for Transport can be found here.

The closed Rail Transport spotlight can be viewed here.

The DfT Rail Transport web page can be found here.

The DfT Command Paper “Reforming Our Railways: Putting the Customer First” can be found here.

Ten Reforms to Grow the Social Investment Market

Written by Stephen Lloyd and Luke Fletcher of Bates Wells & Braithwaite

The sector champions for the Civil Society and for social investment, BWB, have published a paper called ‘Ten Reforms to Grow the Social Investment Market’ that calls on government to make 10 key changes to the regulatory environment in order to make social investment easier.

Click here to see the ten recommendations and make comment. You can also download the full document from that page.

The Children’s Services and Independent Schools theme was open for your comments between 26 October and 10 November 2011.

Since the theme closed we have been working on a set of deregulatory proposals across six categories: adoption, childcare and early years, independent schools, looked after children, safeguarding and special educational needs. In parallel, the Department for Education has been carrying out a series of reviews which have informed that process.

Most of our reviews have now reported and we are pleased to announce that we will scrap or improve around 14% of the regulations included under the theme for which decisions have been made. For example, in the adoption sector we have streamlined the number of regulations by merging those with similar content and we are removing a number of obsolete regulations in the independent school sector.

In order to streamline the regulatory framework we plan to improve nearly 22% of the regulations in the safeguarding sector and remove 17% of the regulations which are no longer relevant – for example, regulations relating to the now defunct ContactPoint.

All this is in addition to the major reviews we have instigated such as the review carried out by Dr Eileen Munro in the area of safeguarding, the Tickell review of the Early Years Foundation Stage, and a major project to improve and streamline the regulations around adoption. We have also recently published our response to the consultation on the Green Paper on Special Educational Needs and Disability, which looks to improve and simplify the current system.

Another 14% of the theme’s regulations are still under review, because we want to make sure that regulations about early years and childcare align with the findings of the Government’s commission on childcare, which is due to report in the autumn. A further 9% of regulations provisionally agreed for improvement are still in the pipeline and will be announced shortly.

We will keep this site regularly updated. We will be looking to remove or improve regulations at the first opportunity so that the benefits will be passed on to, and felt by, teachers, carers and others as quickly as possible.

Relevant links

See full details of the Children’s Services and Independent Schools package, in this spreadsheet here.

The Children’s Services and Independent Schools Red Tape Challenge comment pages can be found here.

21.05.12 – RED TAPE CHALLENGE: ONE YEAR ON

The Red Tape Challenge was launched by the Prime Minister in April 2011. Since then…

…19 regulatory themes launched for comment on the website, totalling more than 3700 regulations.

…Over 28,800 comments and over 950 private submissions have come in, suggesting which regulations should be scrapped, improved, or kept.

…Decisions made and announced by Ministers on 1500 regulations across 8 themes so far – of these, well over 50% will be scrapped or improved.

…8 themes have completed the challenge process and begun implementation: Retail; Hospitality, Food & Drink; Employment-Related Law; Manufacturing; Road Transport; Environment; Health & Safety; and Equalities.

…7 more themes are scheduled to launch on the website by October 2012.

…A total of 123 Red Tape Challenge measures are confirmed for implementation by June 2012.

You can find out more about how we’re doing (as at May 2012), by clicking here [opens a new window].

This sets out our progress to date; what changes we’ve already made; and what’s still to come on regulatory reform.

To get in touch with us, please e-mail: redtapechallenge@cabinet-office.gsi.gov.uk.