Browse regulations

These Regulations relax contribution conditions for Jobseeker's Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance for spouses and civil partners of Her Majesty's Forces members who are credited with earnings under regulation 9E of the Social Security (Credits) Regulations 1975. They allow this group to qualify for contribution-based benefits if they have paid Class 1 contributions and have earnings at the lower earnings limit multiplied by 26.

This regulation creates preferential treatment for a specific group (armed forces families) by relaxing standard contribution conditions. It perpetuates a patchwork of exceptions that undermines the contributory principle—benefits should flow from actual work and contributions, not credits granted due to marital or partnership status. The existing credits system already provides support; this regulation adds another layer of complexity and special pleading for a politically-favoured group, creating unequal treatment in the benefit system.

This Order establishes procedural rules for appeals from licensing decisions made by the Law Society under the Legal Services Act 2007. It designates the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal as the appellate body for licensing decisions, sets out the Tribunal's powers (affirm, quash, substitute, or remit decisions), and provides for further appeal to the High Court on points of law with permission. It applies procedural rules from the Solicitors Act 1974 to these appeals.

This Order perpetuates the reserved legal activities licensing regime that restricts competition in legal services. While it provides procedural safeguards, these safeguards institutionalise a system that limits supply by reserving legal activities to approved licensees. The correct policy response to over-regulation is not better appeals machinery but deletion of the underlying restrictions. The Order creates multiple layers of adjudication (Tribunal + High Court) that add cost, delay, and complexity without addressing the fundamental problem: the statutory monopoly over reserved legal activities that artificially restricts supply and raises prices for consumers.

Amends the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 to extend an exception allowing licensing authorities under the Legal Services Act 2007 to ask about spent convictions when assessing whether a person meets approval requirements for holding a restricted interest in a licensed body. The person must be informed at the time that spent convictions will be disclosed.

This regulation undermines the rehabilitation principle by creating another category of permanent exclusion from a profession based on spent (i.e., already rehabilitated) conduct. The Legal Services Act 2007 liberalised legal services markets, yet this exception restricts who may hold ownership interests in law firms based on old convictions. No evidence demonstrates that past conduct, long since spent, predicts future misconduct in ownership contexts where the person holds no day-to-day client-facing role. Market discipline, professional regulation, and character requirements for active practitioners already address fitness concerns without penalising rehabilitation. The restriction reduces competition and investment in legal services without demonstrated public benefit.

This Order designates the Law Society as a licensing authority under Part 5 of the Legal Services Act 2007 for reserved legal activities (right of audience, litigation, reserved instruments, probate, oaths). It establishes reporting duties for accountants discovering fraud, provides protections for banks/building societies holding client money accounts, grants High Court powers to compel information production for regulatory compliance, and applies disciplinary tribunal provisions to managers/employees of licensed bodies.

This Order perpetuates government-granted monopolies on reserved legal activities through the Law Society's licensing authority, creating structural barriers to entry in the legal services market. While the 2007 Act's framework itself is problematic, this Order specifically entrenches the Law Society's guild-like control over licensing. The accountant reporting duties and compliance requirements add compliance costs without addressing root causes. The fraud detection objectives could be achieved through general antifraud provisions applying to all businesses holding client money, not via a profession-specific licensing monopoly that restricts competition and raises costs for consumers seeking legal services.

The Occupational Pensions (Revaluation) Order 2011, effective 1 January 2012, specifies statutory higher and lower revaluation percentages for revaluing accrued occupational pension benefits under Schedule 3 of the Pension Schemes Act 1993. It determines the inflation-linking rates applied to pension rights when workers change employment or leave a scheme before retirement.

This Order imposes government-dictated revaluation rates on private occupational pension arrangements, restricting the freedom of pension schemes and employers to negotiate appropriate benefit adjustments. Such price controls on pension revaluation create unintended distortions: schemes may over-hedge against statutory increases, small schemes face disproportionate compliance costs, and workers in well-managed schemes cannot benefit from superior investment returns if revaluation is artificially capped. Market competition between pension providers would naturally produce revaluation terms that attract and retain members, rendering government-mandated rates unnecessary and potentially harmful to both workers and employers.

This Order designates a specific sports ground (with accommodation exceeding 10,000 spectators) as requiring a safety certificate under the Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975, with effect from 23rd December 2011.

The 10,000+ spectator threshold captures numerous venues where existing liability incentives, building regulations, fire safety laws, and insurance market discipline already compel adequate safety investment. The certification regime duplicates these safeguards without addressing specific failure modes that cause stadium disasters (crowd crushes, structural failures, fire spread). Compliance costs are borne by operators with unclear marginal safety benefit over existing regulatory frameworks. While the 1975 Act responded to legitimate concerns, blanket capacity-based designations are an inefficient tool that imposes regulatory overhead without proportionate safety gain.

The Artist's Resale Right (Amendment) Regulations 2011 amend the 2006 Regulations implementing EU Directive 2001/84/EC on artists' resale rights. The amendments remove the 'qualifying individual' definition, modify foreign charity provisions, replace transmission/nationality rules with EEA-based requirements, add mandatory five-year review provisions for the Secretary of State, and revoke Schedule 2. The regulation gives living and deceased artists royalty rights when their original artworks are resold.

This EU-derived regulation imposes regulatory costs on UK galleries, auction houses, and art market participants that competitors in New York, Singapore, and Dubai do not bear, driving business abroad. The mandatory review mechanism does not remedy the fundamental problem: a government-mandated royalty scheme that distorts art market pricing, creates administrative burden, and reduces UK competitiveness as a global art marketplace. Post-Brexit regulatory independence should eliminate such inherited EU-imposed costs.

These Regulations permit HMRC Commissioners to disclose VAT return information (business purchase values and return dates from post-October 1985 returns) to the Statistics Board for producing official business and economic statistics under section 20 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007. The Regulations restrict how the disclosed information may be used and limit further dissemination of personal information.

Britons would be worse off without these Regulations because accurate business and economic statistics depend on access to comprehensive VAT data. Official statistics inform private sector investment decisions, market analysis, and public policy. The regulation actually provides safeguards—it limits the Statistics Board's use of data to statistical purposes only (section 4) and restricts further disclosure of personal information (section 5). Without this instrument, the Statistics Board would lack statutory authority to receive this data, degrading the quality of economic statistics that benefit businesses and markets across Britain.

This Order implements EU Regulation 576/2013 on non-commercial movement of pet animals (dogs, cats, ferrets, and pet birds) in Great Britain. It establishes: disease control requirements (rabies, Nipah, Hendra, Echinococcus multilocularis); microchipping rules and approved implanters; carrier approval requirements; local authority enforcement powers; and penalties for non-compliance. It supersedes earlier UK instruments and maintains EU-derived disease certification requirements for imports from specific third countries.

This Order imposes substantial compliance costs on pet owners wishing to travel with animals, requires carrier approvals with associated fees, restricts who may implant microchips, and obligates carriers to check compliance—creating market friction with no corresponding health benefit proportionate to the burden. Many provisions replicate EU requirements that should now be reviewed and simplified to reduce costs for pet owners. The Order retains protections that could be achieved more efficiently through modernised, less burdensome alternatives.

This Order revokes the Central Office of Information Trading Fund Order 1991 and the Central Office of Information Trading Fund (Variation) Order 1992, thereby abolishing the COI Trading Fund and coming into force on 30th December 2011.

This revocation removes a government trading fund that distorted market competition by allowing state-backed commercial activities in communications services. Britons are better off without this regulation because it eliminates unfair competition from a government-backed entity competing with private sector firms, reduces market intervention, and simplifies the regulatory landscape by removing an unnecessary bureaucratic structure established in 1991.

This Order amends section 310 of the Corporation Tax Act 2010, increasing the 'relevant percentage' from 6% to 10% for accounting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2012. The relevant percentage is used to calculate the notional rate for close company loan relationships, affecting the tax treatment of loans made by close companies to their participators.

This instrument increases the tax burden on close company loan relationships from 6% to 10%. While not EU-derived, it represents a tax rate increase that distorts business financing decisions and creates additional compliance costs. The notional rate mechanism itself is a complex provision that introduces uncertainty into corporate tax calculations. Furthermore, if this provision has been superseded by subsequent Finance Acts adjusting corporation tax rates, it is obsolete and should be removed from the statute book to reduce legislative clutter and compliance complexity.

This Order revokes the Competition Act 1998 (Public Policy Exclusion) Order 2007, removing a prior exemption that had excluded certain public policy activities from competition law scrutiny. It came into force on 30th December 2011.

This Order restores the full application of Competition Act 1998 prohibitions to activities previously exempted on public policy grounds. Removing such exemptions promotes competition by ensuring fewer entities are sheltered from anti-competitive scrutiny. While Competition Act 1998 itself represents government intervention, retaining this revocation ensures that public policy exceptions do not become vehicles for rent-seeking or market distortion by exempting powerful incumbents from competition rules. The elimination of this exclusion aligns with free-market principles by closing a loophole that could have been used to shield state-linked enterprises or preferred private interests from market discipline.

This Order, effective 23rd November 2011, detrunks a section of the A419 trunk road (B4040 Swindon Road and Cricklade Roundabout), removing its national trunk road status and reclassifying it as a local classified road under local authority management.

This is a one-time administrative reclassification order that took effect in 2011. The detrunking has already occurred; this order merely documents a historical classification change. Retained EU law doctrine concerns regulations with ongoing regulatory effect, not completed administrative actions. Keeping a spent order that merely records past administrative classification changes serves no ongoing regulatory purpose and adds unnecessary length to the statute book with no corresponding benefit to Britons.

This is a commencement order that brings into force various provisions of the Localism Act 2011, including sections on the general power of competence for local authorities (s.15), local authority companies (s.19), and provisions relating to council tax calculations for 2012-13. It also contains transitional provisions modifying references in the Local Government Finance Act 1992 and reads references to the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime as the Metropolitan Police Authority until the Police Reform Act commences.

This is a procedural commencement order that activates provisions of a democratically-passed Act. Without it, specified Localism Act provisions would remain dormant, creating legal uncertainty and operational dysfunction in local government. The council tax modifications are technical adjustments maintaining fiscal continuity. Deletion would leave enacted legislation in limbo without impacting regulatory burden — it is the underlying Act, not its commencement, that determines policy outcomes.

Temporary regulations created for the 2012 London Olympic Games prohibiting advertising and trading activities in designated event zones during relevant event periods. They established criminal offenses for violations, granted special authorisations to the London Organising Committee and Olympic Delivery Authority, and created a compensation scheme for property damage during enforcement. The regulations ceased to have effect at the end of 11th September 2012.

These regulations are already obsolete — they ceased to have effect on 11th September 2012 and have not been in force for over a decade. Even when active, they represented unnecessary government interference in advertising and trading markets, restricting lawful commercial activity in event zones and creating artificial advantages for official Olympic sponsors through ambush marketing restrictions. Such targeted market intervention during a major event distorts competition, limits supply of goods and services to consumers, and demonstrates the regulatory tendency to achieve one outcome (protecting sponsor exclusivity) while producing unintended consequences (restricting legitimate traders and suppressing price competition). As a retained EU-era regulatory artefact that is both spent and fundamentally flawed in principle, deletion is appropriate.