37.In the Explanatory Memorandum (EM) to these draft Regulations, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) says that the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)17 will come into force on 25 May 2018 and apply directly to all EU Member States: the GDPR requires Member States to ensure that their supervisory authorities are provided with the financial resources necessary for the effective performance of their tasks. DCMS states that these Regulations give effect to this requirement, replacing notification fees with new charges on data controllers, to be paid to the Information Commissioner (IC), unless they are exempt. DCMS estimate for the costs associated with implementing the GDPR is that the IC’s income requirements in terms of its data protection functions will increase from some £19 million in 2016-17 to approximately £33 million in 2020-21. The new charges are arranged in three tiers: Tier 1, for “micro organisations”,18 is £40; Tier 2 is £60; Tier 3 is £2,900. There are a number of exemptions from the requirement to register with the IC and pay the requisite fee, which include manual processing, and processing for personal, family or household purposes. DCMS intends to review these exemptions, and to publish a public consultation in 2018. It states that it is “especially minded to consider an exemption for elected representatives”, though this does not make clear whether such an exemption might also include members of the House of Lords.
38.The Government have committed to improving the efficiency of the tribunals as part of the wider reform of the justice system. As part of this initiative this Order moves away from the existing formats and allows the Senior President of Tribunals (SPT) greater flexibility in deciding whether a Tribunal panel should be composed of one, two, or three members, having regard to the nature of the dispute, the means by which it is to be determined, and the need for the members of tribunals to have particular expertise, skills or knowledge. To provide oversight and to ensure that resources are used appropriately, amendments also introduce a requirement for the SPT to set panel composition by means of a practice direction, which would require consultation with the Lord Chancellor.
39.The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has laid these draft Regulations with an Explanatory Memorandum (EM). The Regulations propose that all slaughterhouses in England will be required to have installed an operational a closed circuit television (CCTV) system in all areas of the slaughterhouse where live animals are present, for example, where they are unloaded, kept, handled, stunned and killed. CCTV recordings must be retained by the slaughterhouse operator for 90 days, and inspectors, such as Official Veterinarians of the Food Standards Agency (FSA), must be granted access to recordings in order to monitor and verify animal welfare standards in the slaughterhouse. In the EM, Defra says that the Regulations fulfil a manifesto commitment from 2017 to make CCTV recording in slaughterhouses mandatory, following widespread concern about several well-publicised cases of animal welfare abuse in slaughterhouses. Defra held a public consultation on these proposals over six weeks to 21 September 2017: nearly 4000 responses were received, and over 99% of these were in favour of mandatory CCTV recording in slaughterhouses. A summary of responses was published in November 2017.19
40.The Department for Education (DfE) has laid these Regulations with an Explanatory Memorandum (EM) and Regulatory Triage Assessment. The Regulations set out the fees that may be charged by Ofsted20 for the inspection of independent schools, from 2018-19. Fees charged for standard inspections will be increased, and new charges will be introduced for several categories of inspection.21 The changes to the fees are in line with the principle that Ofsted should move towards full cost recovery for inspection of institutions which are not publicly funded. Inspection fees have not been increased since 2009. DfE says that, overall, only around £0.8 million of the £4.5 million total costs incurred by Ofsted on the inspection of independent schools are being recovered at 2016-17 cost levels. Fees charged for the inspection of schools are in many cases well below cost levels. The RTA shows that the cost of a standard inspection for a school with 50 pupils would rise from £650 to £900, an increase of almost 40%. In the EM, DfE says that it consulted on these changes over eight weeks to 6 December 2017: 60 responses were received, 58 of them from schools, with many respondents objecting to higher fees for standard inspections. In February 2018, DfE published a summary of responses.22 This explains that 60% of respondents commented that the increase in fees for standard inspections was not reasonable; the principal concern was the impact of the proposals on small schools. DfE comments that it accepts that for many smaller schools the increase is high in percentage terms, but says that the fee increases affect all sizes of school, and that smaller schools will still pay a lower proportion of actual cost than larger schools.
41.The Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has laid these Regulations with an Explanatory Memorandum (EM). In the EM, MHCLG says that the number of homeless households in England is increasing: 59,090 households were accepted as statutorily homeless and in priority need in 2016-17, up 48% since 2009-10; the total numbers in temporary accommodation are also rising. It says that, currently, local housing authorities (LHAs) are likely to focus their resources on households in “priority need”, such as families with dependent children; but that in 2016-17 an estimated total of 214,480 successful cases of homelessness prevention or relief took place outside the main provisions of the statutory homelessness framework in England. MHCLG says that the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 (“the 2017 Act”) will mean that homelessness prevention and relief becomes part of the statutory homelessness framework in England, extending support to all eligible applicants. It adds that the 2017 Act allows LHAs to issue notices bringing their duties to an end when applicants deliberately or unreasonably refuse to cooperate, in order to encourage applicants to work proactively with the LHA. While the 2017 Act contains safeguards to prevent LHAs from ending the prevention or relief duties too soon (such as the requirement for a warning to be given by the LHA before any notice is issued), these Regulations contain additional safeguards to ensure that LHAs develop written procedures for issuing notices which are kept under review, and to guarantee that a notice is authorised by a second officer before it is served to an applicant.
17 “The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) replaces the Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC and was designed to harmonize data privacy laws across Europe, to protect and empower all EU citizens’ data privacy and to reshape the way organizations across the region approach data privacy”. See: https://www.eugdpr.org/
18 Tier 1 applies to data controllers that have less than or equal to 10 members of staff or turnover of less than or equal to £632,000 per annum; Tier 2 applies to small and medium data controllers, namely those that are not in Tier 1 and have less than or equal to 250 members of staff or turnover of less than or equal to £36 million per annum; Tier 3 applies to large data controllers with more than 250 members of staff and turnover of more than £36 million per annum.
19 See Defra, Animal welfare: CCTV in slaughterhouses: Summary of responses and government response, November 2017: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/animal-welfare-cctv-in-slaughterhouses [accessed 6 March 2018]
20 In formal terms, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills.
21 These include pre-registration inspections and standard inspections during the first year of a school’s operation.
22 See Department for Education, Independent schools: inspection fees, and school standards: Government consultation response, February 2018: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/683304/Independent_schools-inspection_fees__and_school_standards__1_.pdf [accessed 6 March 2018]