Browse regulations

Amends the Registered Pension Schemes (Authorised Payments) Regulations 2009 to create a new 'Pension Advice Allowance Payment' in Part 6, effective 6 April 2017. This permits registered pension scheme members to withdraw up to £500 from their pension pot to pay for regulated retirement financial advice, subject to conditions including: maximum two payments per lifetime, no payment in the same tax year, payment made directly to the FCA-authorised financial advisor, and only for money purchase or hybrid arrangements.

This regulation restricts how pension holders may use their own accumulated savings. The £500 limit, two-payment lifetime cap, and same-tax-year prohibition are paternalistic constraints that presume government knows better than individuals how to spend their money. The requirement that payments go 'directly to the advisor' adds administrative burden and limits consumer choice. These payments could already be made through existing withdrawal mechanisms; this regulation merely carves out a narrow, conditional exception rather than enabling genuine freedom. Deleting it removes a layer of prescriptive rules dictating the terms under which Britons can access financial advice from their own pension funds.

These 2017 Regulations amend the Pension Schemes (Categories of Country and Requirements for Overseas Pension Schemes and Recognised Overseas Pension Schemes) Regulations 2006. They modify requirements for overseas pension schemes to qualify as Recognised Overseas Pension Schemes (ROPS), including adjustments to regulatory body requirements, exemptions for certain overseas public service pension schemes, and changes to transfer rules for Guernsey schemes. They also substitute new definitions of prescribed countries and modify benefit payment rules for certain transfer funds.

These regulations restrict UK citizens' freedom to transfer their pension savings to overseas schemes, limiting competition and choice in the pension market. The requirements impose regulatory barriers that drive Britons toward less competitive domestic options. The 'non-resident' restrictions on Guernsey schemes and the prescriptive regulatory body requirements appear protectionist rather than genuinely protective. Post-Brexit Britain should expand pension portability, not restrict it — citizens should be free to access better pension terms available elsewhere. The regulations' costs include reduced retirement outcomes from restricted access to international pension markets, added compliance complexity, and foreclosed opportunities for competitive retirement products.

These Regulations bring into force various provisions of the Policing and Crime Act 2017 on specified dates (3rd April, 6th April, and 2nd May 2017). They cover licensing provisions (alcohol-related), firearms controls, police inspection powers, and include transitional provisions relating to DNA profiling under PACE 1984 and conditional cautions under the Criminal Justice Act 2003.

This is a standard commencement regulation that merely specifies when provisions of an Act of Parliament come into force. It does not itself impose regulatory burdens, create new restrictions, or represent gold-plating of EU law. The transitional provisions ensure legal clarity during the shift from old to new law, protecting both citizens and authorities from confusion. Deleting this regulation would leave the Policing and Crime Act 2017's provisions in legal limbo without commencement dates, causing procedural chaos rather than reducing regulatory burden.

These Regulations make consequential amendments to the Building Societies Act 1986, Friendly Societies Act 1992, Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, Banking Act 2009, and Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act 2013 to ensure insolvency practitioner qualification and regulation rules (from the Insolvency Act 1986) properly apply to building societies, banks, and financial market infrastructures. They address cross-references, modify how insolvency rules apply to these specific entity types, and include transitional provisions.

These are technical consequential amendments that neither remove substantive regulatory burden nor restore free-market principles. They merely ensure existing insolvency regulations (themselves not here reviewed) apply consistently across different entity types. Despite the 'Deregulation' in the title, these regulations add complexity through numerous cross-references and modifications rather than reducing the overall regulatory framework. They represent regulatory housekeeping that perpetuates an already extensive insolvency regulatory regime without meaningful liberalisation.

These Regulations (SI 2017/460) repealed the Birmingham City Council Act 1985, a local Act specific to Birmingham city council. They came into force on 10 April 2017. The effect was to remove the 1985 Act from the statute books entirely, eliminating any regulatory requirements, powers, or duties it contained that applied to Birmingham.

This regulation merely enacts a repeal that has already served its purpose and has no ongoing effect. The Birmingham City Council Act 1985 was a 32-year-old local provision whose repeal was appropriate as part of deregulation. The repeal itself is now spent legislation — once the Act was repealed in 2017, there was nothing left for these Regulations to do. Retaining spent repeal legislation creates confusion and clutters the statute book without providing any benefit. If further deregulation is warranted, it should be accomplished through fresh, targeted legislation rather than preserving historical transitional instruments.

This Order establishes a 'permission in principle' regime for development in England, granting automatic permission for housing development on brownfield land registered in Part 2 of brownfield land registers, and allowing local planning authorities to grant permission in principle on application. It sets procedural requirements including application formalities, publicity via site display and websites, consultation requirements with various bodies and infrastructure managers, exclusion criteria (major development, habitats development, householder development, Schedule 1 development), decision timeframes (5 weeks), and appeal procedures.

This Order perpetuates the fundamental problem with British planning law: government permission is required before property owners may develop their own land. The permission in principle regime, rather than liberalizing development rights, merely creates another bureaucratic tier of approval. The extensive exclusions (major development, habitats development, etc.), mandatory consultations, publicity requirements, and procedural constraints demonstrate that this is not a liberalization but a relabeling of government control. As Friedman and Hayek recognized, price signals and private property rights—not government allocation registers and administrative permission regimes—direct capital to its most valuable uses. This Order keeps Britain dependent on planning permission rather than moving toward development rights. The brownfield land register itself represents government rationing of development rather than market allocation.

These Regulations require local planning authorities to prepare, maintain and publish a Brownfield Land Register in two parts. Part 1 must include previously developed land meeting criteria (area ≥0.25ha or ≥5 dwellings, suitable, available, and achievable for residential development within 15 years). Part 2 includes land the authority decides to allocate for residential development, which grants 'permission in principle'. The Regulations prescribe extensive procedures for consultation, publicity, notification of infrastructure managers, neighbourhood forums, and others before Part 2 entries, plus annual review requirements.

This regulation embodies central planning rather than market allocation. The criteria require local authorities to make speculative judgments about achievability (whether development is 'likely within 15 years') and availability (owner/developer intentions), creating bureaucratic gatekeeping that distorts market signals. The permission-in-principle mechanism for Part 2 removes discretionary planning judgment but replaces it with government allocation of land for housing — still planning, not markets. Extensive consultation requirements (county planning authority, Mayor of London, infrastructure managers, neighbourhood forums) add delay and cost. The 0.25ha/5 dwelling threshold is arbitrary. Property owners remain restricted in what they can do with their land absent government designation. A genuinely free-market approach would remove planning restrictions on brownfield development entirely, allowing owners to develop or sell without government registration or allocation.

A fees amendment regulation that expands the scope of chargeable advisory services under the Offshore Chemicals Regulations 2002 and Offshore Petroleum Activities Regulations 2005, updates references to EU Commission Regulations on fluorinated greenhouse gases, introduces fee mechanisms for the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme for offshore undertakings, and establishes fee formulae for the Offshore Petroleum Licensing (Offshore Safety Directive) Regulations 2015 based on hourly rates of £168 for specialist officers and £82 for non-specialist officers.

This regulation expands bureaucratic fee-extraction mechanisms rather than reducing regulatory burden. The new fee categories for advisory services (items h and i in the offshore regulations) create government monopolies on guidance that the private sector could provide, raising costs for offshore operators with no corresponding public benefit. The ESOS scheme itself represents a compliance burden on businesses that should be reconsidered. The elaborate fee formulae (£168/£82 hourly rates) codify government cost recovery into regulation, removing fiscal discipline and transparency. Post-Brexit, retained EU references to Commission Regulations should prompt fundamental review of whether these regulatory frameworks serve Britain's interests, not merely technical updates to keep them operational.

Annual up-rating regulations that increase working tax credit disability elements (£2,970→£3,000 and £1,275→£1,290), set child tax credit disability elements (£3,175 disabled, £4,465 severely disabled), and raise guardian's allowance (£16.55→£16.70) for tax year 2017/18 onwards.

These are inflationary adjustments to existing benefit rates rather than new regulatory burdens. While tax credits represent government intervention, eliminating the disability and guardian's allowance elements would directly harm vulnerable individuals (disabled children, severe disability cases) with no market mechanism to replace this support. The rates represent minimal adjustments (£30, £15, £0.15 weekly increases) that merely preserve the real value of means-tested support already legislated by Parliament.

These Regulations implement EU Water Framework Directive 2000/60/EC in England and Wales, establishing river basin districts as management units, setting environmental objectives for surface water and groundwater bodies (good ecological/chemical status by 2021-2027), creating protected areas for drinking water and shellfish waters, requiring monitoring programmes and programmes of measures, and providing exemptions for cases of technical infeasibility, disproportionate cost, or natural conditions. The regulations impose prior authorisation requirements for water abstraction, impoundment, and pollutant discharges, and prohibit direct discharges into groundwater with limited exceptions.

As a retained EU law enacted without democratic review, these Regulations impose substantial bureaucratic costs through mandatory characterisation analyses, economic analyses, six-year monitoring cycles, river basin management plans, and prior authorisation regimes. While clean water is a legitimate public interest, the specific WFD implementation framework represents one approach among many possible alternatives. The compliance burden falls heavily on water abstractors, discharge operators, and statutory undertakers, with costs ultimately passed to consumers and taxpayers. The exemption provisions (regulations 16-19) already acknowledge that the targets are often unachievable due to technical feasibility or disproportionate cost, demonstrating the framework's inflexibility. A streamlined approach focusing on outcome-based pollution control with fewer administrative requirements could achieve equivalent environmental goals at lower economic cost.

This statutory instrument amends NHS charges for drugs, appliances, and dental services, implementing annual inflation-linked price increases effective 1 April 2017. It raises dental charges (from £19.70-£233.70 to £20.60-£244.30 depending on treatment band), prescription and appliance charges (from £8.40 to £8.60 and from £16.80 to £17.20), and increases fees for fabric supports and wigs. These are standard annual uprating adjustments to NHS patient charges.

This regulation perpetuates the NHS near-monopoly by keeping user charges artificially below market rates through government-mandated price controls. Rather than allowing market pricing or permitting private alternatives to compete on price, it upholds subsidized charges that entrench public sector dominance and suppress private healthcare supply. Annual price inflation adjustments maintain price controls that distort market signals and reduce incentives for private sector entry. Repeal would expose private providers to fair competition and help break the NHS monopoly position.

The Tobacco Products and Herbal Products for Smoking (Fees) Regulations 2017 establish a fee regime for tobacco and herbal product regulatory compliance under the 2016 Regulations. It imposes annual fees (£1,000 per cigarette variant, £100 for tobacco products, £30 for herbal products), submission fees (£200 for cigarettes/hand rolling tobacco, £60 for herbal products), and makes non-payment an offence resulting in supply bans. It also amends the 2016 Regulations to criminalise non-payment.

These fees function as regulatory taxes that create market access barriers, particularly harmful to smaller producers and new entrants. The dual-area structure (GB and NI) imposes unnecessary duplication costs. While the 2016 Regulations' disclosure requirements may serve legitimate purposes, funding enforcement through specific per-product fees is economically distortive — it raises costs for compliant businesses and creates perverse incentives. The criminalisation of non-payment (effectively banning supply until fees are paid) is disproportionate. Similar regulatory functions can be funded through general taxation without distorting market participation. The fees add compliance costs with no corresponding public health benefit beyond what the underlying disclosure requirements achieve.

The Bereavement Support Payment Regulations 2017 implement section 30 of the Pensions Act 2014, establishing a welfare benefit for bereaved spouses, civil partners, and cohabiting partners. The regulations define: (1) the 18-month payment period calculation rules (including complex Remedial Order provisions for cohabiting partners); (2) higher rate (£350/month or £3,500 lump sum) and standard rate (£100/month or £2,500 lump sum) structures; (3) entitlement criteria for higher rate (pregnancy or child benefit eligibility); (4) prisonerexclusion provisions; and (5) Channel Islands territorial scope.

Without this regulation, bereaved partners—particularly those with children or pregnancy—would face immediate financial hardship and potential poverty following a spouse's death. The free market does not naturally provide this kind of social insurance against tragic circumstances. While imperfect, it provides a minimal safety floor that prevents extreme humanitarian suffering, which aligns with Hayek's concept of a minimum floor of security and prevents the much greater costs of social breakdown that would occur if families were left entirely without support during bereavement.

These are the Licensing Act 2003 (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2017, which make various amendments to earlier licensing regulations from 2005 and 2012. The changes include: removing 'or renewal' references from personal licence and fee regulations (reflecting earlier Act changes); modifying declaration requirements for personal licence applicants regarding convictions and immigration penalties; omitting regulation 8 and certain schedules; and substituting updated forms across multiple regulation instruments (schedules 1-11 for premises licences, schedules 1-4 for temporary activities notices, and the closure notice form). These are primarily administrative and forms updates.

These amendments are almost entirely administrative cleanup—updating forms and removing obsolete 'or renewal' references that became redundant after earlier Licensing Act 2003 amendments. They impose no new regulatory burdens and may slightly reduce compliance costs by streamlining expiry date requirements and removing redundant procedural requirements. Deleting them would leave outdated forms and contradictory references in force, creating confusion and potential administrative inefficiency. Britons are not worse off from these changes; they represent normal regulatory housekeeping rather than new intervention.

These Regulations (Guardian's Allowance Up-rating Regulations 2017, in force 10th April 2017) are a technical amendment that defines procedures for handling questions about the weekly rate of guardian's allowance following up-rating. It redirects disputes to the Social Security Act 1998 determination process rather than the default provisions in the 1992 Administration Acts, and applies Persons Abroad disqualification rules to any additional benefit resulting from the up-rating.

This is a purely procedural regulation that establishes the correct administrative forum for resolving disputes about up-rated guardian's allowance. Deletion would create procedural confusion and leave no clear mechanism for determining rate disputes, without achieving any meaningful reduction in regulatory burden or advancing economic freedom. It imposes no market restrictions, trade barriers, or supply constraints.