New Regulatory Flexibility Guidelines and Regulatory Compliance Guidelines
As part of the Quality Regulation Review the Ministry has produced new Regulatory Flexibility Guidelines and Regulatory Compliance Guidelines to assist policy makers in their consideration of wider aspects of policy development. The aim is to produce better quality regulation, or laws, that deliver closely to the outcome sought by government in an efficient and low cost way.
Regulatory Flexibility Guidelines
The purpose of these Guidelines is to assist and encourage policy analysts to consider options for flexibility when developing policy so as to minimise compliance costs. This can be done through the design of options. Regulatory flexibility has the potential to increase the net benefit to society arising from regulation - it allows us to eliminate or change the application of a law, or a fee, where in certain situations it would result in costs greater than the benefits arising from complying with the law. This recognises that the costs and benefits to be obtained via compliance with a law will potentially vary according to characteristics of the regulated population such as business size, location and industry activity.
Examples of regulatory flexibility are present in a number of New Zealand laws. Smaller companies are exempt from full reporting requirements under the Financial Reporting Act (1993) and the Securities Commission can grant exemptions from the requirements of the Securities Regulations.
Regulatory Compliance Guidelines
The purpose of these guidelines is to assist policy makers and regulators in their consideration of the design, implementation and management of compliance strategies during policy development. Compliance is important to regulatory success and inadequate attention to compliance, especially at the policy development stage, is often the cause of regulatory failure.
These Guidelines are a practical tool to improve compliance. They provide advice, through a checklist approach, on how to consider a mix of strategies to achieve cost effective compliance when considering new policy or regulation. At the outset it urges policy makers to consider the strategic context of regulation, the purpose or intent of regulation, and the size of the problem. It also provides guidance on how to consider the regulatory context - who is compliance targeted at, how likely is compliance, who would bear the risk of non-compliance etc. Other areas of assistance are prompts around how to develop a compliance strategy, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and review.
Policy Development Toolkit
These documents complement the Guidelines on the Regulatory Impact Analysis requirements, and other related guidance such as Guidelines on Assessing Policy Options. For each stage of policy development you should visit the Policy Development Toolkit where the suite of Guidelines to assist better quality policy development can be found.
Graham Boxall
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