The TRA - its first year of operations
Published 29 June 2022
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The Trade Remedies Authority (TRA) was launched as an executive non-departmental public body on 1 June 2021 and is the sole arm’s length body of the Department for International Trade. This note provides an overview of progress over the past 12 months.
Investigations
When the TRA launched on 1 June 2021, we had initiated 14 reviews of measures transitioned from the EU. By 1 June 2022 our portfolio contained a broader mix of 24 reviews and the TRA had completed the first 6 transition reviews. We maintained, or maintained adjusted to meet UK business trade interest, the measures in 75% of the completed transition reviews.
Between 1 June 2021 and 1 June 2022 we initiated 41 new transition reviews, which places us on track to complete all 44 reviews of measures transitioned from the EU by the end of 2025. We have also initiated our first 4 new cases, conducted reconsiderations of two decisions and responded to other new demands including Tariff Rate Quota reviews and requests for circumvention exemption reviews.
Investigations are underpinned by procedural guidance and a quality assurance framework, both of which have been developed and embedded throughout this period.
Our dedicated Pre-Application Office (PAO) has helped potential applicants to develop their cases and offers upskilling sessions on trade remedies. A measure of the success of the PAO was that the recent new ironing boards case was initiated without the applicant needing to use external legal counsel. We are pleased to have recommenced visits to UK producers and importers after the ease of lockdown rules.
The outcome of the Government’s trade remedies review, which was launched in June 2021, will set the future framework for UK trade remedies. We have worked closely with DIT so that the operational impacts of any changes are well understood.
Governance
Over our first year we have built the foundations of strong governance. The Board and its Audit and Risk Assurance Committee have provided oversight and strategic guidance throughout this establishment phase, having held 7 full meetings each. The second Board Committee, the Remuneration Committee, has met once. Work is ongoing on the preparation to lay our full Annual report and Accounts before Parliament post March 2023.
We have benefited from the insight of 9 internal audits conducted by the Government Internal Audit Agency that have provided us with independent and objective assessments and advice to support our development. We are working to achieve full compliance with Government Functional Standards by March 2023.
People
One of TRA’s four strategic goals is to be an expert and innovative organisation where people enjoy working. We aim to be guided in everything we do by our values of integrity, inclusion, transparency and expertise. Over our first year we put organisational focus on trusted leadership, investing in our staff and improving our ways of working. Staff engagement and morale has improved significantly with the 2021 Staff Survey results seeing major gains, including our ‘Organisation Objectives and Purpose’ score rising from 66% in 2020 to 86% in 2021, ‘Leadership and Change’ rising from 43% to 64%, and ‘Inclusion’ rising from 68% to 84%.
Our headcount in June 22 is 138 (FTE) people and we aim to have 160 people by 2025. Attrition remains higher than we would like and was 22% over the past 12 months. However we have maintained continuity at key leadership levels, including our Executive team (with an average tenure of 30 months in post) and our Heads of Investigations and Verification (who have been with TRA for an average of 31 months). Recruiting specialists in a competitive jobs environment has been challenging with a success rate of only 63% across our recruitment campaigns in the past year. We are developing a targeted pay case to present to the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury to help address our recruitment and retention issues.
In June 2022 we launched our People Strategy which sets out our ambitions through to 2025. We aim to be in the top quarter of engagement scores across the Civil Service, to achieve a PERMA3 index score above the Civil Service benchmark and bring satisfaction with pay and benefits in line with the Civil Service, with a maximum attrition rate of 15%.
As the UK has not carried out trade remedies work for half a century, building expertise is a major focus of the organisation. We have invested in our investigator learner journey and in our people’s continual professional development within the specialist functions at the TRA. Our in-house management and leadership development programmes are seeing broad based improvements in technical and managerial skills. 3 Measuring how people are flourishing in our organisation.
Digital
The TRA was set up to be a digital by default organisation and our digital portal, the Trade Remedies Service (TRS), is our user interface and ensures that information about cases is accessible. We continue to invest in the TRS and are exploring ways to improve the user experience.
We have an ambitious new digital vision that will strengthen our ways of working in case investigations, including how we source data, embed hybrid working capabilities and how we can better use digital solutions within the organisation.
We have transitioned our desktop services to a new supplier, allowing us to roll-out better capabilities whilst strengthening our cyber security profile.
Reputation
The TRA’s strategic goal is to be well-understood, known and respected by our domestic and international stakeholders. We aim to achieve this goal by building strong relationships with our priority stakeholders across UK and international businesses, parliamentarians and devolved administrations, international jurisdictions and global peers, academics and interested parties to our cases.
We are running a programme of engagement with British industry to build awareness of trade remedies and partnering with intermediary business representative organisations, such as the Federation of Small Business and the Chambers of Commerce, to gather business insight to help shape our strategy and operations.
We have looked to use communications around our cases to build understanding of the UK trade remedies regime and there has been increased media coverage of our cases across social and traditional media over the period.
The TRA has been building links internationally, looking to learn from best practice and share perspectives on common challenges such as global overcapacity in the steel market. There has been global interest in the UK’s unique Economic Interest Test and we hosted an online international seminar with experts in Brazil, Canada, and New Zealand.