Browse regulations

The Calorie Labelling (Out of Home Sector) (England) Regulations 2021 require qualifying businesses (250+ employees) in the out-of-home food sector to display calorie information on menus and food items. The regulations mandate display of energy content in kilocalories, portion size, and a statement about daily calorie needs (2000 kcal). They include various exemptions for condiments, short-term menu items, alcoholic drinks, institutional food (hospitals, care homes, schools), charity events, and military/intl. transport. Enforcement mechanisms include improvement notices and fixed monetary penalties, with provisions for public guidance and periodic review.

This regulation imposes government-mandated information disclosure on voluntary commercial transactions, creating compliance costs that distort market incentives. The 250+ employee threshold creates competitive distortions between large chains and smaller operators. Market mechanisms already provide calorie information where consumers demand it—businesses have commercial incentives to disclose such information to health-conscious customers without coercive mandates. The enforcement apparatus (improvement notices, fixed penalties, reporting requirements) adds further burden. While obesity concerns are real, mandating menu labeling does not address the root causes of dietary choices and may lead to unintended consequences such as reduced menu variety and higher prices, while restricting the freedom of businesses to communicate with consumers as they see fit.

The Medical Devices (Coronavirus Test Device Approvals) (Amendment) Regulations 2021 amended the Medical Devices Regulations 2002 to create a mandatory pre-market approval regime specific to COVID-19 test devices. Key provisions include: Secretary of State approval requirement before placing on market/supplying (regulation 34A), performance thresholds for sensitivity/specificity by test type (regulation 38B), a public register of approved devices (regulation 38C), emergency exemption powers (regulation 39A), and application fees of £14,000 (or £6,200 for SMEs) (regulation 56A).

This regulation created a government monopoly on COVID-19 test device approval during a public health emergency, imposing £14,000 fees that barriers smaller innovators, prescriptive sensitivity/specificity thresholds that reduced market diversity, and bureaucratic processes that delayed test availability when speed was critical. The pandemic emergency has passed, the review deadline (December 2022) has long elapsed, and the regulatory infrastructure for normal in vitro diagnostic device oversight already exists in the principal 2002 Regulations. The unseen costs include suppressed innovation in testing technology, reduced supply during acute shortage periods, and the precedent of extraordinary market intervention that persists beyond its emergency justification.

Amends the Safety of Sports Grounds (Designation) Order 2015 by removing Twerton Park (Bath City FC) and Blundell Park (Grimsby Town FC) from the list of designated sports grounds. Takes effect 20th August 2021.

This amendment deregulates two smaller football clubs by removing them from safety certification requirements. These grounds, being below the threshold where mandatory designation is justified, now avoid unnecessary compliance costs. Deleting this Order would reimpose regulatory burden on clubs that do not present risks warranting such oversight, benefiting Bath City and Grimsby Town with reduced costs while maintaining voluntary compliance pathways.

Confirmation instrument for Sunderland City Council's scheme to construct the New River Wear High Level Footbridge, a public pedestrian crossing. Made under the Highways Act 1980, it formally approves the scheme and specifies deposit locations for the accompanying plans.

This is an administrative confirmation of a specific public infrastructure project, not a regulatory burden. Footbridges facilitate pedestrian movement, connect communities, and support economic activity. Deleting this instrument would simply block a legitimate public works project that has undergone proper statutory consultation and approval processes. There is no regulatory restriction, compliance cost, or market distortion to remove.

COVID-19 international travel regulations for England that expand vaccine exemptions to include US-vaccinated travelers, impose workforce testing requirements on transport workers, establish technical standards for private COVID testing providers including genomic sequencing requirements, and create criminal offences for non-compliance by operators and passengers.

These regulations impose significant compliance costs on transport operators, create criminal offences for administrative failures, restrict international travel through testing mandates, and layer bureaucratic requirements on private testing providers—all with no clear evidence the benefits outweigh the substantial economic and liberty costs. The passenger locator form requirements and criminal liability for operators represent government overreach that distorts market incentives for safe travel alternatives.

Amendment to the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Scheme Auctioning Regulations 2021, making technical modifications to UK ETS auction procedures including: updating volume calculation formulas to include 'brought forward' (BF) allowances; adjusting specific annual allowance figures; expanding provisions for releasing additional allowances (flexible share); transferring certain administrative authorities between FCA, Treasury and auctioneer; and adding reporting requirements. These amendments extend to the whole of the United Kingdom.

The UK ETS represents a government-imposed cap on industrial emissions that distorts energy markets, raises compliance costs for businesses, and creates market distortions through allowance allocation. This amendment perpetuates and slightly expands the scheme's bureaucratic complexity with new definitions (BF), additional allowance release mechanisms, and more administrative requirements. The 'flexible share' provision allowing release of up to 40 million additional allowances extends government control over energy supply. Britons are worse off because such cap-and-trade schemes inevitably cause carbon leakage, redirect resources from productive investment to regulatory compliance, and impose hidden costs through higher energy prices passed on to consumers and businesses alike.

The Power to Award Degrees etc. (TEDI-London) Order 2021 grants TEDI-London (a higher education institution) the competence to award specific taught qualifications (BEng, MEng, CertHE, DipHE in Global Design Engineering) for a fixed term from 1st September 2021 to 30th November 2024, restricted to students enrolled at the time of completion.

This Order exemplifies the government monopoly on degree-awarding powers that artificially restricts educational competition. While it grants powers rather than restricts them, it does so within a paternalistic framework where institutions must seek government authorization to issue credentials. The fixed term creates regulatory uncertainty. The restriction limiting awards to enrolled students curtails institutional autonomy. In a genuinely free market for higher education, institutions would determine their own curricula and credential frameworks, with employers and students assessing quality through competition rather than government fiat. This reflects the same bureaucratic supervision that Adam Smith critiqued when he argued against chartered monopolies in education.

The Doncaster East Internal Drainage Board Order 2021 confirms a scheme submitted by the Environment Agency for the governance and administrative arrangements of the Doncaster East Internal Drainage Board, a local public body responsible for managing water levels, land drainage, and flood prevention in the specified area. The Order establishes the board's constitution, boundaries, and operational framework under the Land Drainage Act 1991.

Internal Drainage Boards perform essential flood prevention and water management functions for low-lying agricultural and urban areas where private coordination would be impractical. While these bodies could theoretically be restructured, deleting this Order would create a governance vacuum in Doncaster East without an equivalent mechanism for coordinating drainage works, maintaining watercourses, and managing flood risk across multiple landowners. The statutory framework provides clear authority, funding mechanisms, and democratic accountability through board appointments that would be difficult to replicate through private contracts or general local authority powers alone.

Amendment to the Benchmarks (Provision of Information and Documents) Regulations 2021, removing transitional provisions and revising deadlines by which benchmark administrators must provide electronic addresses for receiving regulatory information. Applies to critical benchmarks under the UK Benchmarks Regulation.

While this regulation is procedural rather than substantive, it maintains necessary communication infrastructure between benchmark administrators and regulators. Benchmarks are critical financial infrastructure underpinning trillions in assets; unclear regulatory communication channels during stress events pose systemic risk. Deleting this would create administrative chaos without advancing free-market goals. The regulation does not restrict entry, impose price controls, or mandate business conduct—it merely establishes how regulated entities receive regulatory communications.

Temporary regulation enacted in August 2021 providing limited relaxations to EU-derived Drivers' Hours rules (Regulation 561/2006) for domestic goods transport, permitting extended daily driving (up to 11 hours), increased weekly totals (up to 99 hours over two weeks), and reduced weekly rest periods. Applied only during the 'relaxation period' (9th August – 3rd October 2021) in response to COVID-19 supply chain disruptions and HGV driver shortages. The regulation automatically ceased effect on 4th October 2021.

This regulation is already obsolete — it ceased to have effect on 4th October 2021 and has no current legal force. More fundamentally, it represents the wrong approach to labour shortages: rather than allowing market wages to rise and attract more drivers, it enabled employers to suppress labour costs by mandating longer hours. The 'exceptional circumstances' framing set a precedent for circumventing safety legislation whenever supply chains face disruption, incentivising dependency on overworked drivers rather than structural investment in the driving profession. A temporary derogation that distorts both the labour market and road safety outcomes should not remain on the statute books even in repealed form — it should be deleted entirely.

These are the 8th amendment to the Health Protection (Coronavirus, International Travel and Operator Liability) (England) Regulations 2021. They modify COVID-19 travel restrictions including: removing France as a special case for vaccinated travellers; adding/removing countries from Category 1 and Category 3 travel lists (adding Germany, Austria, Latvia, Norway, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia; removing Bahrain, India, Qatar, UAE and adding Georgia, Réunion, Mayotte, Mexico); updating vaccination evidence requirements for passengers; extensively revising the Schedule 5 list of sporting event exemptions; modifying isolation and testing rules for arrivals from Category 3 countries; and removing prohibitions on aircraft and vessel arrivals from certain countries. The regulations impose operator liability for vaccine evidence compliance and establish a complex tiered system of travel restrictions, isolation requirements, and testing obligations.

These COVID-era travel restrictions represent exactly the kind of bureaucratic burden that suppresses economic dynamism. The complex tiered category system, operator liability requirements, and constantly shifting country classifications create massive compliance costs for airlines, ferry operators, and the Channel Tunnel shuttle services. The government is effectively picking winners through the sporting events list, deciding which competitions are 'important' enough to warrant exemption—a classic interventionist approach. These emergency regulations were never subject to proper democratic scrutiny, being renewed automatically, and their retention in 2021-2022 when vaccination programmes had substantially reduced mortality risk represented regulatory inertia rather than genuine public health necessity. The costs to the travel industry, the administrative burden on operators, and the restriction on personal liberty cannot be justified when simpler, less coercive alternatives (such as relying on vaccination status alone) were available. Delete these and allow the market and individuals to make informed decisions about international travel.

Post-Brexit amendment regulation for Northern Ireland that updates references to EU ecodesign and energy information regulations. It amends the Ecodesign for Energy-Related Products Regulations 2010 and Energy Information Regulations 2011 by substituting updated tables of EU measures, removing a date requirement, and applying only to Northern Ireland. The regulation incorporates EU rules 'as amended from time to time' without independent democratic review.

This regulation exemplifies the worst of retained EU law: it copies EU ecodesign and energy labeling mandates wholesale without scrutiny, adds no value over the original EU rules, and the 'as amended from time to time' provision cedes regulatory control to Brussels automatically—undermining Parliament's sovereignty. These mandatory efficiency standards raise consumer prices, restrict product choice, impose compliance costs on manufacturers, and deter investment. Post-Brexit independence demands actual regulatory reform, not renaming EU laws. The Northern Ireland-only scope creates fragmented UK policy. Deleting this would signal Britain's commitment to genuine regulatory freedom and attract manufacturers seeking a competitive, low-regulation market.

The Education (Student Fees, Awards and Support) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2021 amend multiple education regulations to implement the EU Withdrawal Agreement's citizens' rights provisions. Key changes include: expanding the definition of 'person with protected rights' to include those with deemed rights under citizens' rights provisions; inserting new residency categories (9BA) for Irish citizens in student support eligibility; and updating cross-references across the Education (Student Support) Regulations 2011, Education (Fees and Awards) (England) Regulations 2007, Education (Student Support) (European University Institute) Regulations 2010, Further Education Loans Regulations 2012, and Education (Postgraduate Master's Degree Loans) Regulations 2016. The amendments clarify when Irish citizens and others with EU withdrawal agreement rights become eligible for student fees and support.

This regulation implements the UK's treaty obligations under the EU Withdrawal Agreement, EEA EFTA Separation Agreement, and Swiss Citizens' Rights Agreement. Deleting it would breach international commitments and leave legally resident Irish and EU/EEA citizens without clarity on their student support entitlements. The amendment primarily provides legal certainty rather than adding regulatory burden—it codifies rights already guaranteed under international law and represents proper democratic implementation of the UK's post-Brexit settlement.

Amends the 2004 Key Stage 1 Assessment Order to allow pupils who turn 7 in the 2021-22 school year and scored below the Secretary of State's notified level to be reassessed under the phonics screening check, and extends monitoring provisions to the 2021-22 school year.

This COVID-era amendment perpetuates pandemic-era assessment controls well beyond their emergency justification, adding regulatory complexity around pupil categories and reassessment triggers. The permanent regulatory structure imposes ongoing compliance burdens on schools for what was supposed to be a temporary accommodation. Core functions like reassessing struggling pupils could be handled through school professional judgment or non-statutory guidance rather than primary legislation.

Amends the Education (School Performance Information) (England) Regulations 2007 to extend the definition of 'reporting school year' to include 2021-22, addressing coronavirus pandemic disruptions to school performance data collection.

While school performance regulations represent government-mandated data collection, deleting this amendment would create uncertainty and administrative confusion. Schools still require clarity on reporting obligations, and without this extension, the 2021-22 year would fall into a definitional gap. The amendment itself merely extends an existing framework rather than introducing new regulatory burdens—it does not gold-plate EU law, does not restrict private education supply, and has no meaningful impact on market competition or planning permissions. The original 2007 regulations serve a legitimate informational function for parents and regulators, and this technical amendment preserves that function during pandemic disruption without adding new compliance requirements.