Scottish Pubs Code Adjudicator (Duty to Publish Certain Information) Regulations 2024 and Scottish Pubs Code Adjudicator (Miscellaneous Listings) Order 2024: Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment

Benefits and Costs

The Scottish Pubs Code Adjudicator (Duty to Publish Certain Information) Regulations 2023

Option 1 – Do nothing

Potentially, this option would place less of an administrative burden on the Adjudicator, but they may make the information publicly available voluntarily, as a matter of good practice. Costs are likely to be minimal regardless of whether the requirement is statutory.

Option 2 – Require Adjudicator to publish information about certain types of expenditure and the exercise of functions

This option would ensure good governance, openness and transparency by the Adjudicator. Businesses would benefit from assurance that the Adjudicator is operating efficiently and effectively, and with transparency and this would be particularly valuable for pub-owning businesses that will pay a levy in the future to fund the Adjudicator role.

The Scottish Land Commission is subject to the same requirements and the publication costs are carried out in-house so there are no additional costs other than staff time. The requirements could also be published as part of the Annual Report and Accounts, which the Act requires the Adjudicator to prepare. Printing, postage and stationary costs involved in producing the Annual Report for the English and Welsh Pubs Code Adjudicator in 2022-23 were £7,713 so we could expect any publication costs in Scotland to be similar. There would be administrative costs beyond this but again these are not likely to be significant.

The Scottish Pubs Code Adjudicator (Miscellaneous Listings) Order 2023

Option 1 – Do nothing

This option would place less of an administrative burden on the Adjudicator, but they will be expected to manage records appropriately and may make information available, voluntarily, as a matter of good practice. Costs are not likely to be significant regardless of whether record keeping, and information management requirements are set out in statute.

Option 2 - Make the Adjudicator subject to duties on records management and freedom of information similar to other public bodies

This option would ensure good governance, openness and transparency by the Adjudicator. Since Adjudicator costs will, in time, be met by an industry levy, there may be some additional costs for the pub-owning businesses as a result of the duties introduced by the instrument around records management and freedom of information. Businesses will benefit from assurance that the Adjudicator is operating efficiently and effectively, and with transparency. It may provide further trust to both tenants and pub-owning businesses in the regulatory regime if they are able to ask for and receive information.

Costs are not likely to be significant. As an example, the Pubs Code Adjudicator in England and Wales in 2023 dealt with 7 Freedom of Information cases and in 2022 dealt with 4 cases^[11]. The Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2000 also provides exemptions where the public authority can refuse requests e.g. if it will cost over £600 to provide the information or if they think the request is vexatious^[12], which should reduce the administrative impact.