Guidance

Proportionality in regulatory submissions - Guidance

This document has been written by the RPC, in consultation with stakeholders, to help departments and regulators undertake proportionate analysis.

Documents

Proportionality guidance

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Details

Proportionality in impact assessments (IAs) and post-implementation reviews (PIRs) is about ensuring the appropriate level of resources is invested in gathering and analysing evidence on the impacts of a policy.

The Better Regulation Framework sets out the context for this work when it says that:

all new policies, programmes and projects should be subject to a proportionate assessment of costs and benefits. Parliament, especially the scrutiny committees, expect sufficient information on the impact of a measure, whether or not it impacts business…the level of analysis should be proportionate to the problem it is addressing, and reflect the scale or impact of the measure.

The RPC recognises the need to prioritise analytical resources in order to focus on the most important and impactful measures at times of high demand and limited resource. The guidance here will assist with that process.

The RPC welcomes any feedback on our guidance. Please contact us here to give us feedback or if you have any questions about RPC Proportionality Guidance.

(Photo by Marco Verch on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons)

Updates to this page

Published 10 April 2019
Last updated 9 May 2019 + show all updates
  1. This is the updated guidance, completed and uploaded in May 2019.

  2. First published.

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