Transparency of regulator costs
Following an initial phase of research to understand the frontline regulators' costs and their impact on the regulated community, during 2016/17 we focused on putting more information about the regulators' costs into the public domain. Increasing transparency by regulators about their costs could help to address low awareness among providers - as identified in our research - about how the practising certificate fee is spent and offer assurance around value for money.
Our work last year included a desk review which looked at how oversight is used to apply pressure on costs transparency for regulators elsewhere in the economy. This culminated in us working with the regulators on a collaborative basis to develop and agree voluntary action designed to increase transparency of their costs. The output of this work was an agreed set of Principles and good practice guidance.
Following the agreed Principles and good practice guidance the LSB has published a Cost Statement for the 2016/17 financial year.
This year we will monitor the front-line regulators efforts to increase their cost transparency against the Principles and report the findings to our Board to assess whether any further action is required.
For more information on this project, please contact the project manager Callum Armstrong.