Regulator Solutions

We help regulators improve their regulatory effectiveness by targeting their activities and resources in the most cost-effective ways.

The 2013 Regulators’ Code requires regulators to promote proportionate, consistent and targeted regulatory activity. In the quest for effective regulation, the Government is also committed to reducing regulatory burdens and supporting compliant business growth. However, many regulators have had their budgets reduced in recent years meaning they now need to do more with less resources.

This raises the question: ‘How can regulators improve their regulatory effectiveness within budgetary constraints?’

That is where we can help …


What we do

We help clients improve the way they deliver regulation by:

  • Profiling the industries they regulate – to identify the highest risk areas most in need of intervention
  • Mapping how those industries can be influenced – to identify the most cost-effective routes for influencing those industries
  • Evaluating regulatory initiatives – to understand what has worked, why it has worked (or not), what impact it has had and identify areas for improvement
  • Undertaking complex data analysis – to gain insights from the data that regulators collect and present it in a clear way to identify where risks are becoming more significant and may require intervention
  • Improving staff skills – to transfer our knowledge to your staff so that they can be more effective

Examples of what we have done

Mike Webster has worked on over 50 projects for regulators, and:

  • Developed an intervention toolkit and provided training – to help a regulator design and target cost-effective interventions and evaluate their effectiveness
  • Investigated regulatory effectiveness – to provide evidence of whether the regulatory approach taken had been more effective than traditional inspection-based enforcement and provide recommendations for improving future regulatory effectiveness
  • Benchmarked a range of UK regulators – to learn lessons from those regulators to improve another regulator’s cost-effectiveness in regulating public and private sectors
  • Evaluated the effectiveness of the CDM 2007 Regulations – to identify the impact on the construction industry and areas that needed improvements
  • Analysed and advised on a range of regulatory data – to help regulators get more from that data and focus their activities
  • Led a research project on the Principal Designer role – to broaden understanding of how the CDM 2015 Principal Designer role is working in practice

Our tools and techniques

Over the years, we have developed a range of tools to provide rigorous solutions to regulators’ problems quickly. These include tools for:

  • Influence Network mapping – to obtain information on what influences industries so that regulators can focus their activities where they will have most impact
  • Organisational risk ranking – to identify those organisations with the highest risks so that regulators can focus their resources on those organisations
  • Intervention selection – to help regulators identify, rank and select those interventions that will give the greatest return on investment
  • Stakeholder engagement – to help consult with stakeholders so that regulators have a rigorous evidence base of stakeholders’ views
  • Data analysis tools – to analyse a wide range of data and present it in user-friendly Excel tools that regulators can use on a daily basis

We can provide advice, research, consultancy and training, or undertake forensic investigations if something has gone wrong.  If you would like to discuss how we might be able to help, please drop me a line at mike.webster@mpwrandr.co.uk.