The Regulatory Policy Committee (RPC), an advisory Non-Departmental Public Body of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, published the think piece Impact Assessments: Room for Improvement?.
This paper reflects the Committee’s experience of independently scrutinising the evidence underpinning Government regulatory proposals and sets out some of the Committee’s thinking on how things might be improved – it does not represent Government views on these issues.
One of the Committee’s concerns is the short timescales in which IAs are sometimes produced. The political cycle is unpredictable and dependent on external factors, such as public opinion or relationships with other nations. This can often lead to legislation needing to be developed and implemented quickly, with the timescale for developing the IA being shorter than one might ideally want.
Read the paper here.