Rethinking red tape: Regulatory management for health, environment and society

The fire at Grenfell Tower in June 2017, and the subsequent inquiry into how it happened, made clear the threat posed by the weakening and improper enforcement of regulations that protect public safety. The inquiry has identified, among other causes, the contribution of UK government initiatives that sought to cut “red tape” and reduce “burden”. Its final report, published in September 2024, states that “the pressure […] to reduce red tape was so strong that civil servants felt the need to put it at the forefront of every decision”, and concludes that “…it was not in the public interest to allow the policy on deregulation to impede the ability of officials to promote changes to regulations […] that would improve public safety” (Grenfell Inquiry Phase 2 report, volume 1, 150; 160). The deregulatory agenda was not the most prominent part of the inquiry’s work, and the report is unusual in directly linking an initiative like the “red tape challenge” to regulatory failure. But it highlights the importance of understanding where these initiatives come from, how they work, and what implications they have for health, environmental and social protections. The overarching aim of this project is to inform and promote understanding of these regulatory management rules, and how they might better serve societal interest. Rules about when and how regulation is created are commonly referred to as “Better Regulation” policies. They include processes like impact assessment and evaluation, as well as commitments to reducing red tape and simplifying regulation. Heavily institutionalised, they structure the everyday procedures that civil servants follow when developing policy. Better Regulation is a central tool that governments use to ensure that all policy – in every sector – is based on evidence, engages stakeholders, and responds to priorities. These rules are not politically neutral. The project from which this proposal emerges – Better Regulation for Better Health (BRBH) – explored how Better Regulation affects the making of EU health policy. It found that these rules are used by officials to pursue their political objectives, and by corporate actors to lobby for their interests. It demonstrated that processes of measuring, counting, and monetising regulatory costs fail to adequately capture the benefits of health protections, and how narratives of Better Regulation have the potential to ‘chill’ the development of legislation to promote health. Working with civil society organisations (CSOs) in Brussels, the project has built awareness of Better Regulation and a stronger capacity to advocate for change. The Rethinking Red Tape project significantly extends and scales up this work, by moving beyond the health sphere (encompassing environmental and social policies) and developing a specific focus on the UK. The project will unpack the micro-level methodologies that underpin regulatory management, the meso-level instruments that implement it, and the macro-level agendas that it promotes. It asks whether quantification and other methods of assessing policy impact can be adapted to better capture societal costs/benefits, examines how instruments like the “one-in-one-out” approach to regulation work in practice, and explores how the UK’s regulatory management agenda shapes health, social and environmental legislation. By engaging CSOs and governments, and connecting scholars working in different fields, the project seeks to create and support networks of actors who can increase understanding of, and influence how, regulatory management operates.