Browse regulations

The Waste (Circular Economy) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 transpose EU Directive 2018/851 into UK law post-Brexit, updating references from Council Regulation (EU) 2017/997 to Directive (EU) 2018/851 across 15+ separate regulations. The regulations amend definitions of 'municipal waste', add waste prevention measure requirements, establish separate collection duties with exceptions, set municipal recycling targets (55% by 2025, 60% by 2030 for Wales, 65% by 2035 nationally), mandate landfill reduction to 10% or less by 2035, and require waste management plans with specific content requirements including extended producer responsibility schemes.

While this regulation merely updates references following Brexit, it retains and in some areas expands the EU's command-and-control approach to waste management. The mandatory recycling and landfill reduction targets, forced separate collection requirements with limited exceptions, and waste hierarchy mandates imposed on businesses and local authorities represent government dictation of outcomes rather than allowing market mechanisms and property rights to address genuine externalities. The regulation adds compliance costs and administrative burdens without demonstrating that the mandated outcomes cannot be achieved through less prescriptive means. Post-Brexit Britain should be liberalizing, not maintaining EU-style waste mandates.

These Regulations, in force from 28th August 2020, amended the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 2) (England) Regulations 2020 by inserting new regulations 5A and 5B. Regulation 5A prohibited 'section 63 type gatherings' (large indoor gatherings) during the emergency period. Regulation 5B restricted gatherings of more than 30 persons in private dwellings, certain vessels, or specified public outdoor places, with exceptions for businesses, educational activities, elite sports, and emergency assistance. Violations carried a £10,000 fixed penalty notice. The Regulations also made配套 amendments to multiple other coronavirus restriction instruments regarding penalty calculations and enforcement.

These emergency pandemic regulations are now obsolete — the COVID-19 emergency period has long ended and corresponding restrictions have been repealed. As retained EU law subject to democratic review, they should be deleted rather than remain on the statute book indefinitely. The regulations also imposed disproportionate restrictions on private property rights and peaceful assembly, with arbitrary distinctions (businesses and political bodies exempt from 5B's 30-person limit while ordinary citizens faced £10,000 penalties for private gatherings). The economic costs to events, hospitality, and civil society were substantial with limited demonstrable benefit — particularly given that COVID-19 has since become endemic and far less lethal due to vaccination and natural immunity. Regulations designed for an emergency should not persist beyond it.

Temporary COVID-19 amendment to School Discipline (Pupil Exclusions and Reviews) Regulations 2012, extending time limits for exclusion review meetings when they could not be held in person or remotely due to coronavirus. The amendments add paragraphs (7C) and (7D) allowing time limit extensions 'reasonably necessary' for coronavirus-related reasons, and extend the definition of 'relevant exclusion' to cover exclusions before 25th March 2021. A review of effectiveness was required by 24th March 2021.

This is a purely temporary COVID-19 emergency measure from 2020, now entirely obsolete. The pandemic has ended, schools have returned to normal operations, and the review period (ending March 2021) has long passed with no indication this framework was needed beyond that period. The regulation adds bureaucratic complexity through vague 'reasonably practicable' tests and coronavirus-specific conditions that serve no current purpose. Critically, the extended time limits harm pupils by delaying their right to exclusion reviews — the underlying 2012 Regulations correctly establish time limits for good reason (ensuring timely review of exclusions, particularly significant given the serious consequences of school exclusion). Keeping this regulation merely preserves unnecessary coronavirus-era slack in a system that should operate at normal pace. Delete this obsolete COVID relic and let the 2012 Regulations operate cleanly.

Emergency COVID-19 regulations that amended multiple social care frameworks (Residential Family Centres, Adoption Agencies, Care Planning/Placement, Fostering Services, and Children's Homes) to permit remote interviews, visits, and meetings when in-person attendance would be contrary to coronavirus guidance or not reasonably practicable. Also allowed adoption agencies to make decisions before obtaining all required information. Contained record-keeping requirements and automatically expired on 30th September 2021.

These regulations are obsolete — they expired on 30th September 2021 and are no longer law. Furthermore, they were a product of emergency pandemic governance that normalised remote oversight of vulnerable children and families without adequate evidence that such measures were beneficial rather than merely convenient. The temporary framework failed to include meaningful sunset provisions tied to actual pandemic conditions rather than arbitrary calendar dates. Retention of this framework in the statute book, even as historical record, legitimises the precedent of suspending normal regulatory oversight during health emergencies without proper parliamentary scrutiny.

These Regulations (SI 2020/1036) amend the National Health Service (General Medical Services Contracts) Regulations 2015 and the National Health Service (Personal Medical Services Agreements) Regulations 2015. They came into force on 1st October 2020 and contain technical amendments to the contractual framework governing GP services delivered under the NHS. The GMS Contracts Regulations establish the terms under which contractors provide essential GP services, while the PMS Agreements Regulations provide an alternative contractual route for primary care services.

While Better Britain generally favors deregulation, the GMS and PMS frameworks represent one of the more market-friendly elements of NHS primary care — allowing private and independent practitioners to deliver NHS services under contract rather than as state employees. Deleting these amendment regulations would create contractual uncertainty and gaps in the legal framework governing over 7,000 GP practices. The underlying 2015 Regulations themselves contain appropriate mechanisms for quality standards, access requirements, and contractual terms that facilitate provider competition rather than suppress it. Removing this framework would harm patients more than keeping it, as the alternative — a fully nationalized GP service with no contractual framework — would eliminate the quasi-market mechanisms that have driven innovation in primary care delivery.

COVID-19 international travel regulations for England requiring self-isolation, passenger locator forms, and listing exempt countries and sporting events. Originally implemented August 2020 to manage coronavirus transmission via international arrivals.

Obsolete COVID-era emergency regulation. The public health emergency that justified these restrictions has long ended. These regulations imposed mandatory self-isolation requirements, travel restrictions, and compliance burdens on international travel that have no current justification. The detailed prescription of sporting events in Schedule 3 represents micro-management of the economy through regulation. Retaining these creates ongoing compliance costs and legal uncertainty for the travel, tourism, and events industries with no corresponding public benefit.

These Regulations amend Schedule 29 of the Coronavirus Act 2020 to extend and modify eviction notice periods in England during the COVID-19 pandemic. They suspend certain anti-social behaviour eviction provisions, create tiered notice periods (2 weeks to 6 months depending on eviction grounds), and extend the 'relevant period' for protections until 31 March 2021. The regulations apply different rules for England versus Wales and modify prescribed forms for notices.

These COVID-era emergency measures extended eviction notice periods significantly beyond normal levels (up to 6 months for standard grounds), distorting the rental housing market and infringing on landlords' property rights. Such interventions: (1) reduce landlord incentives to rent property, suppressing supply; (2) make it harder to remove anti-social behaviour tenants, damaging other tenants' welfare; (3) create unequal England/Wales regimes without justification beyond the pandemic emergency; (4) represent textbook price controls that would have been repealed had the pandemic not provided convenient pretext. Now that the public health emergency has passed, these emergency powers should be deleted in their entirety — the Corn Laws were repealed, not extended.

This Order amends the Channel Tunnel (International Arrangements) Order 1993 and Channel Tunnel (Miscellaneous Provisions) Order 1994 to implement provisions of a 2020 quadripartite agreement between the UK, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Key changes include: extending UK frontier control enactments to cover French/Belgian/Dutch officers in control zones; replacing references to the Race Relations Act 1976 with the Equality Act 2010; updating definitions including 'Designated State' to include France, Belgium, and Netherlands; modifying seizure/forfeiture provisions to apply to trains rather than ships/aircraft; and revoking the 2014 Amendment Order.

Deleting this Order would create a legal vacuum in cross-border Channel Tunnel operations. Without these provisions, there would be no clear legal framework for UK courts to assert jurisdiction over offences against foreign officers in control zones, no authority for ministers to require accommodation at terminal control points, and no basis for applying UK frontier control enactments to cross-border rail traffic. The amendments reflect genuine complexity inherent in managing sovereign jurisdictions across a shared infrastructure link. While the underlying border control regime involves state intervention, removing this implementing legislation would harm Britons by creating legal uncertainty, disrupting £billions of trade that moves through the Tunnel, and leaving neither UK nor foreign authorities with clear powers to respond to incidents. The rule of law requires clear jurisdictional rules for this critical infrastructure.

This Order implements the Agreement between the UK and the Kingdom of the Netherlands concerning Border Controls on Rail Traffic through the Channel Tunnel Fixed Link. It gives the force of law to international articles from the Agreement, allows Dutch and UK officers to carry out frontier control functions in each other's territory within designated control zones, extends UK data protection law (GDPR) to UK officer activities in Dutch control zones, establishes jurisdictional rules for offenses in control zones, and modifies frontier control enactements to apply with Dutch equivalents. The Order facilitates cross-border rail services by enabling pre-clearance arrangements.

While border controls represent government intervention, this Order implements a bilateral treaty obligation that cannot simply be deleted without diplomatic consequences. The cross-border pre-clearance mechanism actually facilitates international trade and travel by allowing direct rail services without stops for border checks. Deleting this would leave the UK in breach of its international treaty obligations with the Netherlands and disrupt essential Channel Tunnel rail services. The framework serves a legitimate function in enabling efficient cross-border movement while the underlying treaty commitments remain in force regardless of domestic regulatory status.

This Order designates 12 independent schools in England as having a religious character (Church of England, Jewish Orthodox, Islam, Seventh-day Adventist, and Roman Catholic) and revokes previous designations for 7 schools. It formalises which religion/denomination's tenets each school follows for regulatory purposes.

Government designation of religious character is unnecessary bureaucratic intervention that creates preferential regulatory treatment. This designation system enables tax exemptions, public funding advantages, and regulatory exemptions for 'designated' religious schools that secular institutions cannot access — distorting the educational market and penalising families who prefer secular or non-designated options. If religious schools provide value to families, they can compete on that basis without state endorsement. The regulation reflects the very NIMBYism and state-preferred monopolies that have failed British families, particularly in restricting educational supply and choice. Deletion would level the playing field for all schools and parents.

Designates Runnymede St Edward's Catholic Primary School in Liverpool as a school having a religious character, enabling it to provide religious education according to Roman Catholic tenets under Schedule 19 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998.

This Order merely executes Parliament's established framework for faith schools. Religious schools increase educational pluralism and competition against the state school near-monopoly. Deleting this would deny parents the choice of a faith-based education and prevent the school from operating in accordance with its established religious character — harming Britons who would be worse off without this option.

Emergency regulations targeting a COVID-19 outbreak at Greencore Food to Go Ltd in Northampton, requiring self-isolation for workers at specific premises during August 7-21 2020 and their household members. Created criminal offenses and fixed penalties (£100-£1000) for non-compliance. Applied only to this specific workplace outbreak and included a 28-day expiration clause.

These regulations have already expired (28-day sunset clause) and addressed a specific, time-limited outbreak at one company in August 2020. They cannot be applied to any current situation. The criminalization of failure to self-isolate, combined with enforcement powers including forcible removal and £1000 penalties for obstruction, represents a degree of state coercion that should not persist in law after the emergency has passed. Keeping expired, outbreak-specific regulations on the books serves no legitimate purpose and creates risk of inappropriate precedent or misinterpretation.

These Regulations specify conditions for care leaver apprenticeship bursary payments to be exempt from income tax under section 254A of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003. They define who qualifies as a care leaver apprentice (under 25, meeting Children Act 1989 definitions), set the bursary cap at £3,000, require payment by the Education and Skills Funding Agency, and tie eligibility to apprenticeships beginning on or after 1st August 2023.

This regulation layers targeted tax exemptions on top of government-funded bursary payments, creating redundant intervention. The bursary is already a transfer from the Education and Skills Funding Agency; taxing that transfer and then exempting it adds unnecessary complexity to the tax code. The arbitrary date restrictions (apprenticeship must begin on or after 1st August 2023) and the preferential treatment of one group over others (care leavers vs other low-income apprentices) distorts labor market signals. A simpler approach would be to either fund apprenticeships directly or tax all bursary payments uniformly under general principles, rather than maintaining a web of means-tested tax expenditures tied to specific social categories.

Amends the Social Security (Contributions) Regulations 2001 to add care leavers' apprenticeship bursary payments (exempted from income tax under section 254A ITEPA 2003) to the list of payments disregarded for Social Security contributions purposes. Ensures consistency between tax and NIC treatment of these specific payments.

Deletion would create inconsistent treatment between income tax and National Insurance contributions for care leaver apprenticeship bursaries. If tax-exempt bursaries were subject to NICs, care leavers would face a discriminatory burden compared to other apprentices receiving similar support, undermining the policy intent of supporting this vulnerable group's training. The regulation causes no harm to general competitiveness or market function—it simply aligns contribution rules with existing tax policy.

These Regulations amend the Assured Tenancies and Agricultural Occupancies (Forms) (England) Regulations 2015 by substituting Form No. 6A, and suspend paragraph 12(2) of Schedule 29 to the Coronavirus Act 2020. They include a savings clause for notices given before commencement under section 21(1) or (4) of the Housing Act 1988. The regulations appear to be a COVID-19 response modifying housing notice requirements.

While these regulations are primarily procedural, the suspension of the Coronavirus Act provision represents a partial reduction in COVID-era regulatory interventions. Form modifications that streamline landlord notice requirements reduce transactional friction in the private housing market without restricting tenant rights—merely modernizing administrative processes. The savings clause appropriately protects legitimate expectations for notices already in circulation. Britons would be worse off without this because removal of the savings clause could create legal uncertainty for notices already served, and the procedural form substitution, while minor, serves legitimate administrative functions that prevent document rejection errors.