Minutes:
The Business and Relationships Manager, Worcestershire Regulatory Services (WRS) provided the Board with a verbal update on Primary Authority.
The Business and Relationships Manager, WRS informed Members that as of the 1st October 2017, Regulatory Delivery had made changes to Primary Authority. The Enterprise Act 2016 included measures to extend and simplify Primary Authority enabling all United Kingdom (UK) businesses to benefit, including pre-start-up businesses.
Summary of key changes:
· Fewer eligibility criteria, enabling businesses trading in one local authority area and those who were not yet trading to access assured advice.
· Simpler access to advice through coordinated partnerships.
· A more structured role in Primary Authority for public bodies with a regulatory or supervisory role across the UK (national regulators).
· Streamlining the Primary Authority processes.
As from 1st October 2017 every UK business was able to access advice they could trust from one place.
Through Primary Authority, businesses could form a statutory partnership with a local authority, which provided them with assured advice which other regulators had to follow.
Primary Authority provided local regulators with a highly effective tool to improve compliance and build better relationships with businesses, whilst aiding economic growth.
The Business and Relationships Manager, WRS, further informed the Board, that all WRS direct partnerships were either signed up to the new terms and conditions or were in the process of doing so.
Officers were in conversation with three direct partnerships and one co-ordinated trade association partnership. Meetings had been scheduled to liaise with them with regard to signing up as a Primary Authority.
An internal Primary Authority Review was carried out this year. WRS had decided to change the way Primary Authority was negotiated as from January 2018. This was from both a business perspective and from an income generation/ accounting perspective. The review found that WRS were working reactively. Therefore meetings had been scheduled as from October 2017, with each Primary Authority, initially to going through the recent Primary Authority changes, but also to work with each Primary Authority to look at what they needed from WRS over the next 12 month period. Therefore giving WRS a better understanding of resource allocation and to see how much income was expected to be generated from Primary Authority partnerships.
At the request of the Chairman, the Head of Regulatory Services, WRS, briefly explained that Primary Authority was a statutory scheme established by the Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008 (the RES Act). It enabled eligible businesses to form a legally recognised partnership with a single authority in relation to regulatory compliance. The local authority was then known as its ‘Primary Authority’. The scheme made it easier for business’s to comply with regulation and to operate in the United Kingdom.
There were two types of partnership, ‘direct’ and ‘co-ordinated’. The term ‘direct partnership’ was used where the business accessed the scheme by virtue of being regulated by more than one local authority or traded across different authority boundaries. The term ‘co-ordinated partnership’ was used where the business accessed the scheme by virtue of the fact that it shared an approach to compliance with other businesses, for example a trade association that provided regulatory guidance to its members.
RESOLVED that the Primary Authority verbal update from the Business and Relationships Manager, Worcestershire Regulatory Services, be noted.