Browse regulations

Temporary 12-month modification to the Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme Regulations 2018, substituting the definition of 'CHPQA' with a reference to the Combined Heat and Power Quality Assurance Standard, Issue 8, March 2021. Comes into force alongside the Combined Heat and Power Quality Assurance (Temporary Modifications) Regulations 2021.

This is a temporary patch to an existing government subsidy scheme that distorts energy market signals. The Renewable Heat Incentive itself represents government picking winners in the energy sector, creating inefficiency and redirecting resources from more competitive uses. Temporary modifications that merely update referenced standards within a subsidy framework do not address the fundamental problem: such schemes crowd out private investment, inflate costs for consumers, and are ultimately funded through taxation or energy bills. The underlying scheme should be repealed rather than iteratively modified.

Amendment to COVID-19 international travel regulations for England, removing Azores/Madeira/Portugal/Mauritius from travel ban list, adding Ethiopia/Oman/Qatar/Somalia, creating exemptions for transport workers and vulnerable persons requiring Secretary of State confirmation, and mandating testing for seasonal agricultural workers.

These regulations exemplify the worst of emergency governance: restrictions on fundamental liberty (freedom of movement) implemented via delegated legislation with minimal parliamentary scrutiny. The complex exemption system requiring Secretary of State written confirmation creates bureaucratic barriers and uncertainty for travelers, transport workers, and businesses. The prohibition on arrivals from specific countries distorts travel markets without clear evidence of cost-effectiveness. By March 2021, these COVID-era travel restrictions had already imposed enormous costs on aviation, shipping, tourism, and trade without demonstrating proportionate public health benefit. Post-Brexit Britain should not retain such Soviet-style travel permits. The regulations should be deleted entirely.

These Regulations (2021, in force 12th April 2021) repeal and revoke provisions of the Patents Act 1977 and Intellectual Property Act 2014 related to the Unified Patent Court and European Patent with Unitary Effect. They also repeal the Schedule of related enactments. This is a deregulatory instrument removing the legal framework for UK participation in the EU unitary patent system following the UK's post-Brexit decision not to participate in the Unified Patent Court.

This regulation is inherently deregulatory—it removes regulatory burden by eliminating the framework for EU unitary patent systems the UK government chose not to participate in post-Brexit. Deleting it would restore outdated retained EU law and re-impose an unnecessary regulatory framework. As a repeal instrument that reduces statutory burden rather than adding to it, keeping it aligns with the goal of streamlining Britain's regulatory estate.

Amendment regulations extending COVID-19 eviction protection measures from March 31, 2021 to May 31, 2021. These regulations prevented landlords from evicting tenants during the coronavirus pandemic, originally enacted as emergency public health measures.

This regulation is obsolete - COVID-19 emergency measures have ended and the pandemic no longer justifies this intervention. Even at the time, it distorted the rental market by preventing landlords from exercising property rights and enforcing voluntary contracts. Such emergency interventions should not persist on the statute books indefinitely. The regulation imposes unseen costs on property owners, reduces rental market efficiency, and creates moral hazard by disconnecting rent payments from tenancy continuity. Parliamentary scrutiny was bypassed via emergency powers.

These Regulations allow the Secretary of State to direct specified persons (First Minister, deputy First Minister, NI Ministers, NI departments, Local Commissioning Groups, and the Regional Agency for Public Health) to implement CEDAW report recommendations on abortion in Northern Ireland. The Secretary of State may override the requirement for matters to be brought to the Executive Committee of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Directions must be laid before Parliament and published.

This regulation centralizes power in the Secretary of State to override Northern Ireland's democratic institutions, mandating specific healthcare actions without local consent. It exemplifies state-directed healthcare policy that reduces local accountability and flexibility. Removing this would restore decision-making to the people of Northern Ireland through their own democratic institutions rather than Westminster diktat.

These Regulations amend the Meat Preparations (Amendment and Transitory Modification) (England) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020 by extending a deadline from 31st March 2021 to 30th September 2021. The regulations apply to England only and relate to post-Brexit transitional arrangements for meat preparation requirements.

This regulation simply extends a transitory deadline without scrutiny of the underlying regulation's costs. It represents the retention of EU-derived meat regulations without parliamentary review of whether they impose unnecessary costs on British businesses. The transitory nature itself signals these regulations were not fully vetted for the post-Brexit regulatory environment. Repealing this amendment leaves the door open to more fundamental reform of meat preparation regulations that may be gold-plated or add cost without proportionate food safety benefit.

This Order amends the VAT (Section 55A) Order 2010, updating definitions of 'allowance' to include references to the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Scheme Order 2020, removing definitions for 'certified emission reduction', 'emission reduction unit' and 'operator', and substituting article 6 to specify that the specified services are simply a transfer of an allowance. It applies to supplies made on or after 1st May 2021.

This regulation codifies VAT treatment for carbon allowance transfers under the EU/UK Emissions Trading Scheme — a market-distorting mechanism that artificially creates property rights over atmospheric capacity. While the amendment simplifies article 6 to a single sentence, the underlying framework remains a bureaucratic intervention that raises costs for businesses, distorts investment decisions toward politically-favoured 'green' activities, and connects UK tax law to an EU directive reference despite Brexit. Carbon trading schemes reduce industrial activity rather than emissions (leakage to less regulated jurisdictions) while imposing compliance costs that harm competitiveness. The regulation's core purpose is to normalise and support this interventionist structure through favourable VAT treatment.

Amends the Energy Performance of Buildings (England and Wales) Regulations 2012 to reduce fees for entering data onto the energy performance register. Specifically reduces the fee in paragraph (a) from £1.86 to £1.64 and in paragraph (b) from £9.84 to £1.89. Comes into force 1 April 2021.

This amendment reduces regulatory costs for property market participants. While the underlying EPC regime represents government intervention in the property market, this specific change lowers compliance costs. Deleting it would simply revert fees to higher levels, making Britons worse off by increasing transaction costs for property sales, rentals, and new builds that require energy performance certificates. Fee reductions, even within a regulatory framework, benefit consumers and businesses by reducing the cost of property transactions.

This Order designates coastal margin land between Whitehaven and Silecroft for public access under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949, specifying that the access preparation period ends on 30 March 2021. It implements the coastal access report approved by the Secretary of State on 28 September 2015.

Public coastal access rights generate tourism revenue and support local economies. This Order merely designates specific land for access already approved under established domestic legislation (not EU-derived), imposing no regulatory burden on businesses. Deleting it would create legal uncertainty around public rights of way and potentially harm the economic activity that coastal tourism generates.

Extension of coronavirus-related insolvency measures originally enacted in the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020. These regulations extend multiple deadlines: wrongful trading liability suspension extended to June 2021; small supplier exclusions extended to June 2021; moratorium provisions extended to September 2021; and winding-up petition restrictions extended to June 2021.

These regulations extend temporary COVID interventions that distort market signals by preventing normal insolvency proceedings. They shield poorly managed companies from accountability, deprive creditors of legitimate legal remedies, and prop up zombie businesses at the expense of economic restructuring. The ability to extend deadlines via ministerial fiat rather than primary legislation exemplifies the unaccountable regulatory approach this agency seeks to eliminate. Such interventions should have been allowed to expire as originally scheduled.

A minor variation Order to the Spring Traps Approval (England) Order 2018 that removes 'ferrets' from the conditions column for the DOC 250 trap entry and updates the company name 'PERDIX Wildlife Supplies' to 'PERDIX Wildlife Solutions Ltd'.

While this is a technical amendment, deleting it would leave Britons worse off because the ferrets restriction would remain in place, denying pest controllers a legitimate method. The removal of 'ferrets' from conditions actually relaxes a restriction, providing more options for pest control. Additionally, the company name update reflects accurate commercial registration. This variation improves upon the original Order's terms rather than restricting them.

A technical amendment regulation that updates document version references in four other Customs/Trade regulations: changing 'eight digit' to remove that specification in classification code definition, and updating references to various guidance documents (Authorised Use, Tariff of the United Kingdom, UK Reliefs document, and Suspensions of Import Duty Rates Document) from earlier versions dated December 2020/January 2021 to version 1.1/1.2 dated 22nd March 2021.

This regulation imposes no substantive costs—it's purely administrative housekeeping that updates document version references. Removing it would leave outdated version references in underlying regulations while the actual current documents (which practitioners rely on) remain unchanged, creating confusion without any corresponding benefit. The regulation neither restricts trade, imposes new compliance burdens, nor affects duty rates or substantive customs procedures.

Amends the Customs Tariff (Preferential Trade Arrangements) and Customs (Tariff Quotas) Regulations 2020 to: add new preferential trade agreements (Albania, Jordan) to the applicable agreements table; update version numbers for existing preferential tariffs and origin documents (CARIFORUM v1.1, Central America v2.1, Japan v2.1, Turkey v1.1); add Suriname to the CARIFORUM agreement; remove the St. Christopher and Nevis Memorandum of Understanding; and make technical amendments to quota proof requirements.

While this regulation implements post-Brexit trade agreements, it maintains and perpetuates the preferential quota system—a protectionist mechanism that distorts trade by allocating market access based on political negotiation rather than comparative advantage. Quotas create rents for quota holders, invite rent-seeking and corruption, and represent managed trade rather than free trade. The unseen costs include: compliance costs for businesses navigating complex rules of origin; resource misallocation as traders orient commerce toward quota-eligible goods rather than genuinely competitive ones; and barriers to entry for new traders who lack quota access. Britain's historic role as a free-trading nation was built on unilateral tariff liberalisation, not bilateral preference schemes. The proper course is to repeal preferential quota restrictions entirely and allow tariff-based trade on MFN terms, which would be simpler, more equitable, and more conducive to genuine competition.

This statutory instrument amends multiple education regulations in England, primarily to extend deadlines for teacher qualifications and training requirements from 2020 to 2021 (COVID-19 related), add Gibraltar as a recognized jurisdiction for qualified teacher status, rename 'teaching schools' to 'teaching school hubs', extend teacher induction periods from 3 to 6 terms divided into two parts with different teaching load limits (90% and 95%), add reporting requirements about induction periods, and insert provisions for extending induction periods for parental/paternity/adoption leave.

The extension of teacher induction periods from 3 to 6 terms adds unnecessary bureaucratic burden and delays full qualification, creating a barrier to entry that will exacerbate teacher shortages. The 90%/95% teaching load caps distort the labor market by artificially limiting how much inductees can teach, increasing costs for schools without clear benefit. The new reporting requirements impose administrative compliance costs on schools without demonstrated value. The regulation represents regulatory expansion under the guise of COVID-19 response, with some provisions (like the two-part induction structure) going well beyond what pandemic recovery requires. Many amendments are technical but cumulatively add complexity rather than streamlining the framework.

Defines the 'control period' for the 2020 UEFA European Championship (held June-July 2021) under the Football Spectators Act 1989, spanning from 5 days before the first match outside the UK to when the last match outside the UK concludes. Extends to England and Wales only.

The regulation is entirely time-limited and event-specific, applying only to the 2020 UEFA European Championship which concluded in July 2021. The control period has long since expired and the Order serves no ongoing legal purpose. It is a defining of dates for a past event that cannot recur, making it functionally obsolete.