Resources
Practical checklists for regulatory teams
Licensing decision-making
Use before a contested hearing, or as an annual health check on committee practice.
- 01Is the current statement of licensing policy within its five-year review period?
- 02Does the policy give committees something specific enough to apply, and is any cumulative impact assessment supported by current evidence?
- 03Do reports separate relevant representations from irrelevant ones, and explain why?
- 04Have all parties seen everything the committee will see, including late material?
- 05Does the reasons template prompt findings on each disputed issue rather than an outcome only?
- 06Are conditions precise, enforceable and tied to a named licensing objective?
- 07Where the committee departs from policy, is the departure identified and explained?
- 08Are reasons settled while the deliberation is fresh, with legal support available?
- 09Are site visits recorded, and is anything observed put to the parties for comment?
- 10Is there a route for reviewing decisions that were appealed or challenged, so the lesson is captured?
Street trading and markets framework
Use when deciding whether a legacy framework needs modernising, and how much of it.
- 01Can you produce every instrument in force: adopting resolution, designations, byelaws, market rights and any local Act provisions?
- 02Do the current designations match how the streets are actually used today?
- 03Is newly created public realm designated at all?
- 04Are standard conditions specific, verifiable and proportionate to a defined harm?
- 05Can the fee model be explained on a cost recovery basis to a trader or a scrutiny committee?
- 06Is there a current adopted street trading policy that individual decisions can be consistent with?
- 07Is the delegation for determining consents clear and up to date?
- 08Do the enforcement arrangements reflect what officers can realistically do?
- 09Are market rights and street trading regulated coherently, or in tension with each other?
- 10Does the trading framework support the regeneration objectives the authority has adopted elsewhere?
Procurement Act readiness
Use to test whether the reformed regime has reached your internal machinery, not just your training records.
- 01Have contract procedure rules been reviewed against the Procurement Act 2023, and are they working as intended in practice?
- 02Does the scheme of delegation say who may approve a direct award and on what basis?
- 03Is every notice obligation mapped to a named owner and a date?
- 04Is there a reporting route when publication slips?
- 05Is there a written exclusion and self-cleaning assessment process, agreed before it is needed?
- 06Do evaluation templates produce assessment summaries capable of being issued unamended?
- 07Is there a moderation trail that shows how scores were reached?
- 08Does the forward plan give enough lead time for pipeline notices?
- 09Is contract performance information being collected as well as published?
- 10Does the audit committee receive assurance on all of the above at least annually?
Regulatory governance and assurance
Use ahead of an audit committee report or a governance self-assessment.
- 01Is the scheme of delegation current, and does practice match it?
- 02Can each significant regulatory decision be traced to a person with authority to take it?
- 03Are policies within their review period, and is there an owner for each?
- 04Where audit or scrutiny has made findings, is there evidence the remedy was implemented rather than merely accepted?
- 05Do officers have templates that produce defensible records without institutional memory?
- 06Is there a single view of regulatory risk across licensing, enforcement, markets and trading standards?
- 07Are training obligations for members and officers defined and monitored?
- 08Does the assurance reporting tell members what is actually going wrong, or only what has been completed?
Using these checklists
These are working tools rather than a statement of law. They are drawn from the questions that come up repeatedly in advisory work, and they are deliberately short enough to be used in a meeting.
If a formatted version would be useful for circulation internally, or you would like a checklist adapted to your own framework and committee arrangements, ask and we will send one. There is no charge and no obligation attached to it.
Nothing on this page is legal advice, and no checklist can substitute for advice on a specific set of facts. Where a question on this page produces an uncomfortable answer, that is usually the point at which it is worth a conversation.
Initial discussion
Want one of these adapted to your organisation?
Tell us which framework you are working to and we will tailor the checklist to it.