The UK Government First Package Of Deregulatory Reforms

11 May 2023

The UK government are unveiling the first package of deregulatory reforms which will reduce unnecessary regulation for businesses, cutting costs and allowing them to compete. This is the first package of a series of deregulation announcements expected this year focused on delivering benefits to business.

This package includes:

• Reducing the business burden. We will reduce time-consuming and disproportionate reporting requirements for specific elements of the Working Time Regulations, while retaining the 48-hour week requirement and upholding our world leading employment standards. This could save employers around £1bn a year. We are also simplifying regulations that apply when a business transfers to a new owner.
• Ensuring regulation is, by default, the last rather than first response of Government by reforming the Better Regulation Framework. The new, smarter framework will ensure future regulation of our changing economy is streamlined, minimises business burdens, and puts forward-looking regulation at the heart of Government decisions.
• Improving regulators’ focus on economic growth by ensuring regulatory action is taken only when it is needed, and any action taken is proportionate. Following Professor Dame Angela McLean’s review of the regulators’ Growth Duty, the government intends to consult on refreshed guidance on how regulators deliver their growth duties. The Government will also consider the merits of commencing statutory reporting and how best to promote growth with utilities regulators, who are currently not in scope of the Growth Duty.
• Promoting competition and productivity in the workplace by limiting the length of non-compete clauses to three months, providing more flexibility for up to 5 million UK workers to join a competitor or start up a rival business after they have left a position. The change will also provide a boost to the wider UK economy, supporting employers to grow their businesses and increase productivity by widening the talent pool and improving the quality of candidates they can hire.
• Stimulating innovation, investment and growth by announcing two strategic policy statements to steer our regulators. We are today publishing the first of these statements for consultation, on energy policy, which will be followed soon after by the Government’s strategic steer to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

You can find more information via this press release and this policy paper.

Today they have also updated the Retained EU Law (REUL) Dashboard, which was first published on 22 June 2022 and updated in January this year. The dashboard sets out for each piece of REUL its name, type and territorial extent. The dashboard also provides an overview of the percentages of REUL which have already been amended, repealed or replaced. The data used to populate the dashboard will also be available to download via a file uploaded to our gov.uk page.