Corporate Enforcement Policy

Our corporate enforcement policy outlines how we administer and enforce a range of legislation across a variety of services which helps to protect our residents' health, safety and welfare, prevent crime, improve the environment and support the local economy.

Corporate Enforcement Policy (PDF, 367 KB)

Improving your experience

We want to promote efficient and effective approaches to regulatory inspection and enforcement. It will help to improve regulatory outcomes without imposing unnecessary burdens on individuals and businesses. Our revised policy is an overarching policy that applies to all our services with enforcement duties, carrying out a wide range of regulatory roles in meeting many statutory duties of protecting the public, our workers and the environment.

We carry out these functions through a combination of programmed inspections, responding to complaints, issuing licences and permissions and offering advice.

What the policy is intended to do

The policy is intended to help our staff:

enforce the law in a fair, equitable and consistent manner
assist compliant businesses to meet their legal obligations
take firm action against those who flout the law or act irresponsibly

The Regulator's Code and supporting businesses to grow

The policy is in line with the Regulators Code and supports helping businesses in a way which helps them comply with rules and grow. We promise to be transparent and to engage with those we regulate in a straightforward way. We will share information on compliance and risk and we will encourage compliance.

The Regulators Code came into statutory effect on 6 April 2014 It provides a flexible framework based on principles of good regulatory practice. It helps us to design our service and enforcement approaches in a manner that best suits the needs of regulated businesses and groups.

The code applies to specified local authority regulatory functions and we have to adhere to it when developing bespoke policies and operational procedures. The services covered by the regulatory code include:

food safety
environmental protection
health and safety
private sector housing
public health
waste
licensing

Consultation

The Corporate Enforcement Policy was prepared following an internal consultation exercise across all our services. A wider consultation exercise was carried out between 16 October and 24 November 2023. The final policy incorporates all relevant comments.

Reviewing the policy

The policy will be reviewed on a three-year cycle, or earlier if the law changes.