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• 3. Compliance Principles

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10. These Regulatory Compliance Guidelines are based on the following principles:

1. Compliance and strategies to achieve it should be considered when regulatory policy is first developed. This is because compliance and the costs of achieving acceptable levels of compliance are material to decisions on whether or not to regulate.
2. Strategies for achieving compliance should be transparent. This is so that decision makers, regulators and evaluators can understand how acceptable levels of compliance will be achieved and how strategies for achieving compliance will contribute to the objectives and outcomes underpinning a decision to regulate.
3. Compliance strategies should be proportionate to the size of the problem being regulated for. This is to ensure that the costs of achieving compliance are not disproportionate to the size of the problem and intended benefits of regulation.
4. Compliance strategies should reinforce related policy outcomes and objectives. This is because different approaches to achieving compliance can either reinforce or detract from related policy outcomes and objectives.
5. Compliance strategies should be sensitive to the situation being regulated. This is because different situations may necessitate different approaches to achieving compliance if regulation is to be effective.
6. All the costs of compliance should be considered. This is because the approach taken to achieving compliance needs to be cost effective, in the wider economic sense – and the benefits of compliance need to be balanced against all costs including the costs to innovation and enterprise
7. Compliance strategies should change as relevant circumstances change. This is because the context of regulation may change meaning that the approach initially taken to achieve compliance may no longer be appropriate.
8. Enforcement is only one element of compliance. This is because effective regulation often requires understanding and acceptance of the purposes of regulation by those being regulated.
9. Compliance outcomes should be measurable and reviewed over time. This is so that the effectiveness of the regulatory policy and related compliance strategies can be monitored and reviewed over time.