Professional Standards Authority: Right-touch regulation 2025

Summary

The Professional Standards Authority (PSA) have published an updated version of 'Right-touch regulations'. Right-touch regulation is the approach PSA adopt in their work and encourage others to adopt.

The principles-based framework helps with deciding how best to protect the public by looking at the level of risk of harm and choosing the most effective and proportionate response, whether through regulation or other actions.

This latest version of Right-touch regulation expands on its central ideas to support regulators in responding to the challenges and opportunities faced today, which are quite different to those faced when the last edition was published in 2015. It highlights that agility and collaboration are more important than ever in addressing these issues.

The central principles, alongside the areas of new emphasis outlined in this edition, encourage efficient identification of what needs to be regulated and how. Applying these principles helps lead to approaches which drive improvement and enable rapid responses in evolving and changing situations.

Content

Right-touch principles

The concept of Right-touch regulation emerges from the application of the principles of good regulation identified by the Better Regulation Executive in 2002 , to which the Professional Standards Authority has added agility as a sixth principle.

With this addition, the principles state that regulation should aim to be:

• Proportionate: regulators should only intervene when necessary. Remedies should be appropriate to the risk posed, and costs identified and minimised
• Consistent: rules and standards must be joined up and implemented fairly
• Targeted: regulation should be focused on the problem, and minimise side effects
• Transparent: regulators should be open, and keep regulations simple and user friendly
• Accountable: regulators must be able to justify decisions, and be subject to public scrutiny
• Agile: regulation must look forward and be able to adapt to anticipate change. These principles provide the foundation for thinking on regulatory policy in all sectors of society.