Browse regulations

This Order adjusts the Annual Tax on Enveloped Dwellings (ATED) annual chargeable amounts for chargeable periods beginning on or after 1 April 2020, using a table that references the taxable value of the interest on the relevant day. It is an indexation mechanism under section 101 of the Finance Act 2013, intended to update thresholds in line with inflation.

This Order perpetuates a distortionary tax that penalises specific property ownership structures, creating arbitrary compliance burdens and distorting capital allocation decisions. The ATED itself—originating from FA 2013—was premised on the flawed notion that company ownership of residential property constitutes a social harm requiring correction. Such taxes increase transaction costs, discourage legitimate property investment, and represent government interference in private ownership choices. Indexation merely preserves an existing distortion; deleting this Order (and ideally the underlying ATED) would remove a layer of complexity that benefits neither the market nor ordinary taxpayers, while eliminating compliance costs that fall disproportionately on those holding property through corporate structures.

These Regulations set the standard lifetime allowance for pension savings at £1,073,100 for the tax year 2020-21. The lifetime allowance caps the amount of pension savings that can receive tax relief before triggering a tax charge.

This regulation is time-limited to a past tax year (2020-21) and is therefore obsolete. Furthermore, the lifetime allowance itself is a government cap on private saving that distorts individual retirement planning decisions, creates perverse incentives to reduce pension contributions near the threshold, and imposes compliance burdens. Such rate-setting for historical periods should be deleted as part of systematic cleanup of retained EU-era and superseded tax regulations.

Annual indexation Order adjusting income tax allowances for tax year 2020-21, including blind person's allowance (£2,500), married couple's minimum amount (£3,510), married couple's allowance thresholds (£9,075), and adjusted net income limit (£30,200) under the Income Tax Act 2007.

This is a routine mechanical indexation adjustment that prevents fiscal drag — without it, inflation would silently push taxpayers into higher brackets or strip away allowances, effectively raising taxes without democratic approval. While any tax allowance involves state intervention, removing this mechanism would create arbitrary real-terms tax increases and administrative chaos. The amounts themselves remain modest policy choices; the indexation mechanism itself is benign.

These Regulations implement Part 2 of the Civil Liability Act 2018 by requiring 'relevant insurers' (those issuing 100,000+ private motor insurance policies) to report detailed claims, premium, and savings data to the FCA. Insurers must provide actual figures alongside counterfactual calculations 'as if the Act had not been enacted,' include audited statements, describe benefits passed to consumers, and submit inflation-adjusted returns by 1st October 2023. Part 3 also amends the Risk Transformation Regulations 2017 to modify the definition of 'qualified investor' for offers not regarded as public offers.

These regulations impose substantial compliance burdens on large motor insurers through mandatory audited disclosures, counterfactual calculations, and FCA reporting requirements. The counterfactual 'as if the Act had not been enacted' calculations are inherently speculative constructs that serve no market purpose. Requiring insurers to demonstrate 'benefits passed on' to consumers via savings creates an implicit expectation of price control that distorts market signals. The 100,000+ policy threshold disadvantages smaller insurers and creates barriers to market entry. Part 3's amendment to qualified investor definitions is minor but follows the same pattern of unnecessary regulatory intervention in private capital formation. These information requirements add compliance costs ultimately borne by consumers through higher premiums, without addressing genuine market failures.

Amendment Regulations that extend various compliance deadlines in the Street and Road Works (Amendments Relating to Electronic Communications) (England) Regulations 2020, shifting dates from April/May to July/August 2020.

This instrument merely defers deadlines, reducing immediate regulatory burden on utilities and contractors. Deleting it would reinstate the original earlier deadlines, imposing tighter compliance requirements during a period when businesses were likely already strained. The amendment causes no new regulatory costs and does not expand regulatory scope.

This Order amends the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (Establishment of Conservation Board) Order 2004 to reflect the creation of Buckinghamshire Council as a unitary authority on 1st April 2020, replacing Buckinghamshire County Council and four district councils (Aylesbury Vale, Chiltern, South Buckinghamshire, and Wycombe). The amendment updates the Board membership appointment mechanism so that Buckinghamshire Council appoints five members instead of the previous arrangement where five separate authorities each appointed one member.

This is administrative restructuring, not regulatory burden. The Order merely updates references to reflect the creation of a unitary authority and adjusts appointment mechanisms accordingly. Deleting it would leave the 2004 Order referencing councils that were dissolved in 2020, creating confusion and governance difficulties for the Conservation Board. There is no regulatory cost to keeping this amendment—it simply aligns administrative structures with current local government geography.

Transitional regulation that revokes the earlier Health Protection (Coronavirus, Business Closure) (England) Regulations 2020, preserves criminal liability for offences committed under the revoked regulations, and carries over administrative designations from the old framework to replacement provisions.

This is a transitional/cleanup instrument that has already served its purpose by effectuating the revocation of the original COVID-19 business closure regulations. The underlying original regulations represented one of the most dramatic government interventions in economic liberty in modern British history, forcibly closing tens of thousands of businesses with criminal penalties. Even setting aside the original merits, this transitional provision has no ongoing function—the revocation it effects is already complete, and transitional provisions for past offences exhaust themselves as cases conclude. The carried-over designation powers merely preserve bureaucratic continuity for a regulatory framework that自由市場 advocates would argue should be permanently dismantled rather than maintained in standby. This instrument should be deleted as a spent regulation that clutters the statute book with relics of emergency powers that should never have been enacted.

These 2020 Regulations amend NHS primary care contracts to allow temporary suspension of contractual obligations and enforcement during pandemics. They introduce provisions allowing the NHS Commissioning Board to issue announcements suspending dental and pharmacy contract terms when a disease is or may be imminently pandemic, and mandate home delivery services for pharmacies during such periods.

These emergency pandemic regulations permanently encode temporary crisis measures onto the statute book. They grant discretionary powers to the Board to suspend contractual terms without parliamentary approval, interfering with contractual freedom that should be renegotiated between parties. The home delivery mandate imposes permanent operational requirements on pharmacists based on abstract 'announcements' that can be issued or withdrawn at any time. Post-pandemic, these provisions serve no ongoing purpose and represent the type of bureaucratic overreach Better Britain exists to eliminate.

This Statutory Instrument makes consequential amendments to approximately 40 other sets of regulations to incorporate parental bereavement leave and statutory parental bereavement pay into the UK's social security, tax credits, housing benefit, and occupational pension frameworks. It ensures that parents who lose a child are treated equivalently to those on maternity, paternity, or shared parental leave for purposes of benefit eligibility, earnings calculations, pension contributions, and social security credits.

While the Better Britain framework rightly scrutinises regulations that distort markets or create unnecessary burdens, this instrument merely standardises the treatment of a statutory leave right across the benefits system. Deleting it would harm grieving parents by removing social security credits, preserving pension entitlements, and maintaining benefit eligibility during parental bereavement leave—protections that exist for other family leave forms. The regulation addresses real costs of the underlying policy rather than creating new regulatory burdens; the primary legislation establishing parental bereavement leave is the proper target for repeal if desired.

A statutory instrument that comes into force on 31st March 2020 and revokes the Occupational and Personal Pension Schemes (General Levy) (Amendment) Regulations 2020. It is a deregulatory measure that removes a 2020 amendment from the statute book.

This revocation removes a regulatory burden from the statute book. Any instrument that reduces the stock of regulations, particularly one that reverses a 2020 amendment (likely enacted with insufficient parliamentary scrutiny), aligns with the goal of restoring Britain's free-market regulatory environment. Unseen regulatory costs include compliance burdens on pension scheme operators, administrative complexity, and distortions to market competition. Deleting this revocation would restore the 2020 amendment and its associated costs. The revocation itself imposes no burden and represents the kind of regulatory spring-cleaning Britain needs post-Brexit.

This Commencement Order brings into force section 163(2) of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 to facilitate temporary enhanced criminal record certificate checks for health and social care professionals being temporarily registered to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. It covers nurses, midwives, medical practitioners, pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, social workers, and health profession members seeking to provide NHS health services or social care services related to COVID-19, as well as emergency volunteers under the Coronavirus Act 2020.

This Order was enacted specifically to facilitate emergency pandemic response in March 2020. The temporary registration provisions it enables were crisis measures designed to address an acute, time-limited emergency that has since passed. Keeping this regulatory infrastructure in place serves no ongoing purpose while maintaining bureaucratic processes for emergency worker deployment that are no longer justified. The underlying emergency has concluded, and the special pathways for temporary registration should be allowed to expire rather than remain as permanent fixtures of regulatory architecture.

A transitory Order that modifies section 113E of the Police Act 1997 (criminal record certificates: specified children's and adults' lists: urgent cases) to maintain continuity during the transition to the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012's barring information provisions. It extends to England and Wales and applies only until section 72(1) of the 2012 Act is brought into force.

While this transitory provision serves a technical bridging function during legislative transition, criminal record certificate regimes and barred list systems—however well-intentioned—create barriers to employment in care, childcare, and education sectors. These systems generate substantial compliance costs, delay hiring, and disproportionately affect workers with old or irrelevant convictions. The safeguarding objective could be achieved through more targeted, less restrictive means. Furthermore, as a transitory measure awaiting full commencement of the Protection of Freedoms Act provisions, it represents an incomplete regulatory framework that should be superseded by primary legislation rather than perpetuated through extending instruments.

These regulations amend the Police Act 1997 (Criminal Records) Regulations 2002 to set fees for criminal record certificates (£23) and enhanced criminal record certificates (£40), with an additional £6 for urgent responses. They introduce extensive fee exemptions for COVID-19 emergency responders including volunteers, temporarily registered health professionals, social workers, and those providing NHS or social care services related to coronavirus. The regulations extend to England and Wales and came into force on 28th March 2020.

These regulations represent COVID-19 emergency legislation that has now become obsolete. The extensive fee exemptions for coronavirus-related volunteers and temporarily registered health/social care workers created preferential treatment and administrative complexity that served a specific pandemic purpose. The original 2002 regulations provided a cleaner fee structure without these pandemic-era distortions. Since the emergency basis for these provisions has passed, maintaining this amended version perpetuates complexity for ongoing criminal record check administration without justifying the continued departure from the standard fee regime.

Commencement regulation that brought into force specific provisions of the Coronavirus Act 2020: section 18 and Schedule 13 (registration of deaths and still-births), section 19 (waiving confirmatory medical certificate requirement for cremations in England and Wales), and section 21 (similar cremation certificate modifications for Northern Ireland). Made in March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic emergency.

This is a commencement provision with no independent regulatory effect — it merely activates other regulations. The underlying Coronavirus Act 2020 provisions were emergency, time-limited measures enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic. They have since expired or been repealed (the Coronavirus Act 2020 was substantially repealed by the Sunak Acts's statutory instruments). A regulation that merely activates temporary emergency provisions that have lapsed serves no current purpose and adds unnecessary legislative clutter. Furthermore, the relaxation of cremation certificate requirements was a temporary administrative concession, not a structural reform worth preserving — it would be better to assess whether any lasting changes are actually needed on their own merits rather than through this superseded commencement mechanism.

The Merchant Shipping (Tonnage) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 amend the 1997 Tonnage Regulations to: update cross-references from 1980/1984 passenger ship construction regulations to 1998 regulations; revise the Load Line Rules definition; update the segregated ballast oil tanker reference from Regulation 13 to Regulation 18 of MARPOL Annex I; insert a new inspection regime allowing the Secretary of State to verify International Tonnage Certificates (1969) for non-UK ships in UK ports; and require periodic review of the regulations every five years.

While this is primarily a technical amendment updating outdated cross-references, the inspection regime in new Regulation 15A serves a legitimate port state control function—verifying foreign vessels hold valid tonnage certificates and that ship characteristics match documentation prevents certificate fraud and ensures fair competition among shipping operators. The mandatory five-year review requirement (Regulation 17) provides democratic accountability and ensures the regulations can be reformed if found wanting. These amendments maintain the UK's implementation of the International Convention on Tonnage Measurement of Ships 1969, which establishes a standardised system for measuring ship tonnage globally—removing this could create confusion in port state interactions and undermine the UK's ability to regulate its waters effectively.