The ERS was approved by the ENTRUST Board and published in 2014, reflecting the Government's Regulators' Code which was published in April 2014. The Regulators' Code came into effect under the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006. The Act was extended under the Enterprise Act 2016 which requires regulatory bodies to report on how implementation of the code has affected their regulatory functions and the impacts on those they regulate.
Following this, in 2017 ENTRUST reviewed the ERS to ensure they continue to meet ENTRUST's requirements as a regulator. Furthermore, in light of ENTRUST's move to digital information and service provision, the ERS were also reviewed in keeping with the Government's 'digital by default' strategy.
Following this review the ERS have been extended from the original 25 standards across seven areas, to 31 standards encompassing the regulatory work undertaken throughout the organisation and reflecting the standards detailed in the Regulators' Code. The updates to the ERS include:
- The consultation standards previously at 1.2a and 1.2b relating to the carrying out of consultation exercises and reporting on their outcome have been merged into one standard;
- An addition has been made to standard 2.1a to ensure that EBs feel confident that they can approach ENTRUST for guidance without undue fear of enforcement action meeting sub provision 5.4 of the Government's Regulators' Code;
- A new standard at 2.1b has been included to address ENTRUST's move towards full digital information and services provision in keeping with the Government's digital by default strategy;
- Standard 2.2a has been updated to provide for consultation activities regarding the creation of new guidance meeting sub provision 5.3 of the Regulators' Code;
- Two new standards, 3.3a and 3.3b, have been added to reflect the training ENTRUST staff undertake to reflect the sub provisions of 1.3, 1.4 and 6.4 of the Regulators' Code and we have included the requirement for staff to act in accordance with ENTRUST's service standards;
- An addition has been made to standard 4.1b regarding minimising the burden imposed on EBs through data collection to ensure that only data essential for regulatory purposes is collected. This accounts for sub provision 1.1 of the Regulators' Code concerning minimisation of the regulatory burden imposed on EBs. This addition will also address the collection of data under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR);
- We have updated the section numbering to move reviews from 5.1 to 5.2 to allow for a new section which has been added at 5.1 covering the route to appeal against project application decisions accounting for sub provisions 2.3 and 2.4 of the Regulators' Code;
- A new standard at 5.2c has been added to account for the use of risk scores in deciding which EBs to inspect, which reflects sub provision 3.2 of the Regulators' Code;
- A new standard at 6.1c has been added to account for the communication of required actions to non-compliant EBs and provision of opportunities for dialogue meeting sub provision 2.2 of the Regulators' Code;
- Provision 7.3a has been amended to include the publication of anonymised accounts of the outcomes of all formal complaints; and
- A new standard at 7.4a has been added to cover our publication of EB benchmarking data.
The primary emphasis of the ERS is to focus in upon the fundamental aspects of the work which ENTRUST delivers. Transparency is included as a separate area although it encompasses all the work we do and can perhaps be better viewed as an umbrella standard which covers all of our work.You can access the full ERS on the right hand side of this page or on the ERS page of our website, which also includes our annual assessments against these standards.
As a best practice regulator we are always keen to gather stakeholder feedback. If you have any comments or questions relating to the updating of the ERS please email helpline@entrust.org.uk