Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA) - Toolkit

Section 5: Next Steps and Implementations

Recommendations/ preferred options

Depending on the stage of policy development, officials may be in the position to make recommendations or identify one or more option to be taken forwards. Officials should set out any recommendations with reference to the impact assessment results. Where Ministerial decisions have been made, these should be set out alongside appropriate rationale for transparency. This should note the impacts identified for that option and justify why they are deemed tolerable.

Where options are being taken forwards, any identified mitigating actions to address impacts/ concerns should also be noted

Implementation considerations/ plan

Officials should outline implementation and delivery plans covering the key issues for each option being taken forwards. These are likely to refer to earlier sections and might include:

• ownership – who is responsible for implementation and who will make decisions?
• the aims of implementation – identifying the policy objective and outcomes considered necessary, including success criteria;
• timetable for implementation – key decision points and milestones, specifying where flexibility may or may not exist;
• identification of stakeholders – who will be involved in implementation and who may be more widely affected?
• communication strategy – how officials will share updates, expectations and requirements allowing for early warning to those who will be affected, especially small businesses and other organisations;
• risk management – how this will be done for the delivery and implementation of each option.
• existing initiatives – how the policy/ regulation will align with other ongoing work, including those by other government departments and inspection agencies, and aggregated burdens

Implementation plans can set out further steps that will be taken to gather more details on impacts and consider mitigations. This may include discussing plans with the Regulatory Review Group to gather feedback.

Post Implementation Review

As part of finalising monitoring arrangements officials must also recognise the need for a formal post-implementation review. This should be within 10 years of regulations/ policy coming into force, and earlier where appropriate for example where coincides with a pre-programmed review.

This review should establish whether implemented policy/ regulations are having the intended effect and whether they are implementing policy objectives efficiently. The implementation review is not intended to review the effects of the policy itself or to determine whether the intended policy is still desirable; However, such a review is recommended and may be carried out in parallel.

Officials should use the final BRIA as the starting point for this work, given that it should establish a baseline and include the success criteria against which the effectiveness of the policy in delivering the objective will be assessed. Key issues for planning this review should include:

• whether the policy objective has been met;
• whether impacts have been as expected, including the costs and benefits;
• views of stakeholders regarding implementation of the policy and whether there have been any unforeseen unintended consequences;
• compliance levels, whether they indicate that the enforcement regime is effective and whether it could be adjusted to be lighter touch/ risk based or needs to be stronger;
• the basis of the review – whether it is statutory (forming part of the legislation) or non-statutory commitment to review;
• criteria for modifying or replacing the policy if it does not achieve its objectives or is viewed as no longer necessary (for example if the issue is no longer relevant;
• confirming that the five principles of better regulation are evident in delivery and outcomes.

Declaration

The Cabinet Secretary or Minister responsible for the policy (or the Chief Executive of non-departmental public bodies and other agencies if appropriate) is required to sign off all BRIAs prior to publication where they are in support of legislation.

Officials should confirm whether they are completing a partial or final BRIA.

The Consumer Duty also requires that the Cabinet Secretary or Minister responsible for the policy (or the Chief Executive of non-departmental public bodies and other agencies if appropriate) to confirm that they are content that officials have considered the impact on consumers as required by the Consumer Scotland Act 2020 in completion of the Consumer Duty section of this BRIA.

Partial and Final BRIAs should be shared with the Directorate for Business and Better Regulation - businessregulationengagement@gov.scot

Signed BRIAs should be published on gov.scot using APS

Five hard copies of any published BRIA should be sent to the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) and an electronic copy sent to their collections team.

An electronic copy of any published BRIA should be sent for the attention of the Regulatory Review Group.

Where appropriate, one copy each should be sent to the following:

• the lead committee;
• Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee;
• Parliament Legal Advisors.