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In 2002, the Cabinet Office and Department of Trade and Industry commissioned a piece of research to pilot an interview-based methodology for measuring the impact of regulations on business. Francis Chittenden and Ray Oakey of the Manchester Business School undertook this research. The finding of this study can be found in the Report on a pilot research methodology for assessing the impact of existing regulation on business [PDF 124KB, 8 pages]
The report concludes that the pilot showed that this methodology could be used to produce robust estimates of the impact of regulations. However, it also notes that some refinement to the methodology is needed and that a survey large enough to produce reliable estimates could be prohibitively costly.
To build on these recommendations, further work was commissioned during 2003/4 to assess the methods for evaluating the impact of regulation on business. George Yarrow, Tony Appleyard, Christopher Decker, Tim Keyworth and Pavinder Samra – all from the Regulatory Policy Institute [External website] – undertook this work.
The report of this work, Pilot study of a combined postal, telephone and structured interview methodology for assessing the impact on business of existing regulation [PDF 827KB, 137 pages], tests out a variety of methodologies for measuring the impacts of regulation, using the surface engineering industry as its chosen sector. It concludes that it is possible to measure the total impact of regulation on a particular sector, and that a combined postal, telephone and interview was a feasible way of applying this method to other sectors.