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Over the last decade, research by the Department of Geography's King's Centre for Risk Management (KCRM) has helped successive UK governments to reform regulation by making regulatory inspection and enforcement more `risk-based'. Risk-based approaches promise to make regulation more efficient by targeting regulatory activities only at cases that pose unacceptable risks rather than by trying to prevent all possible harms. KCRM research has helped make UK regulation more risk-based in three important ways. First, KCRM research significantly informed the key recommendation of HM Treasury's Hampton Review of Administrative Burdens on Business that all regulatory inspection and enforcement should be risk-based. Second, KCRM supported the implementation of that recommendation when it gained statutory force for almost all regulators in 2008 through practical advice to a number of government departments and agencies. Third, KCRM's impact on regulatory reform was reinforced by HM Government's full acceptance and ongoing implementation of Löfstedt's recommendations to strengthen risk-based regulatory practice in his 2011 Independent Review of Health and Safety Regulation.
Dr Robert Falkner's research into international risk regulation for emerging technologies underpins the work of the Nanotechnology Policy and Regulation programme at LSE. On the basis of this work, Dr Falkner was tasked by the European Commission to lead the first ever comparative study of nanotechnologies regulation in the EU and US. This research has stimulated policy debates in the UK and Europe on how to strengthen regulatory capacity in the field of nanotechnologies. The research has highlighted, in particular, the importance of improved transparency about nanomaterials in consumer goods and supply chains. This research finding has influenced the conclusions of the first UK parliamentary enquiry into nanotechnologies regulation and has informed a recent shift in global policy debates towards comprehensive and mandatory nanomaterials registers.
This case study is concerned with the impact of our research on small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in the food industry in Wales. Specifically, the preliminary impact is about the development of a Knowledge, Innovation and Technology Exchange (KITE) programme. Set up in 2008, it was based on £3.9 million initial investment from the Welsh Government and the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development. Through sustained knowledge exchange via the KITE programme with 31 food manufacturing businesses in Wales there have been two main types of direct impact with benefits to end-users. First, there have been improvements to food production and food safety management systems in many of those businesses. Second, there has been increased economic prosperity, by March 2013 resulting in £27 million of increased sales, £540k of waste reduction within processing, and the creation and safeguarding of 1,072 jobs.
[Throughout this Impact Case Study, references to the underpinning research are numbered 1 to 6; sources to corroborate the impact are numbered 7 to 16.]
Research at Kingston University into global food safety, led by Professors Naughton and Petroczi, established new methods of using large databases to identify risks in the food chain and inform regulatory action.
Through Professor Naughton's chairmanship of the EFSA External Review Working Group, this research contributed to improvements in the practices and procedures of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the main body providing scientific advice to the European Union on risks in the food chain. This led to a reduction of around 75% in the number of erroneous outputs generated by EFSA, with consequent benefits to food safety across the EU.
The four Environment Agencies in England & Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland have introduced, or are planning to introduce, new strategies for regulating low risk treatment sites and activities. These strategies are based on Black and Baldwin's research. Implementation is planned for 2011-13 onwards. The Irish Environmental Protection Agency has led the way in 2012-13, having already implemented GRID/GRAF in a specific low risk area (domestic waste water).
LSE research on endogenous risk has had impact at both the macro and micro level. At the macro level, it provided input for the design of the counter-cyclical measures and systemic risk surcharges in the Basel III regulations in financial markets. It also provided a significant input to the G20 agenda on financial stability. At the micro level, the research has had a significant role in shaping the thinking and recommendations of the UK Foresight Report on "The Future of Computer Trading in Financial Markets". Through this, the work had a direct impact on Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) II, the EU legislation that governs how EU financial service markets operate. The original EC proposal for trading halts in volatile markets — Minimum Resting Times (MRT) — to regulate high frequency trading was dropped and the Foresight proposal of time stamps based on synchronised atomic clocks across trading venues was adopted.
LSE research has become a focal point for understanding how the `crowding' effects of auditable targets can have unintended and often dysfunctional consequences for organisations and the public. The impact has two elements. First, challenging conventional wisdom and stimulating debate among stakeholders and practitioners in their search for best practice. The reach of this challenge has been global and across different fields, including accounting, risk management, public administration, social policy, education and psychiatry. Second, influencing actual changes to auditing and risk management policy and practice arising from these debates.
Food safety and quality management developments have resulted from a combination of major food incidents, government regulations and industry initiatives. This has led to the development of private standards that have become quasi-regulatory on industry. The body of evidence aggregated from the RAU's research and consultancy activities has provided a unique global perspective on food safety regulation and management. Governments, NGOs and industry have used this evidence to further national and global strategies for food safety management including primary production. Current research is now centering on two key areas: strategic management of risks in primary production and public: private partnerships supporting agriculture.
One solution proposed to contribute to the resolution of the current UK obesity crisis has been to provide clear, visible and easily understood nutritional information to help consumers make informed decisions when purchasing food. Newcastle research provided two insights: first that consumers found it hard to interpret multiple versions of nutritional labels, and secondly that the label with the highest overall comprehension included traffic light colouring, Guideline Daily Amounts and the words "low", "med" and "high" to aid decision making. This information was used by the Department of Health in their approval of a new, consistent food labelling in June 2013. This system has now been adopted by major manufacturers including MARS, Nestlé UK, PepsiCo UK and Premier Foods, and retailers including Sainsbury's, Tesco, ASDA, Morrisons, The Co-operative Food and Waitrose.
Lyme borrelliosis (LB) is on the increase with over 3000 clinically or serologically diagnosed cases/pa in the UK. Alerting the public to LB risk has to be balanced against encouraging or undermining countryside use for health and recreational benefits.
The reach and significance of impact was initially built into the research with end-user stakeholders involved in the study design, interpretation and application of the results to change public and organisations' risk communication practices.
End-user impact has been acknowledged in an independent Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) evaluation as well as a local authority tick awareness campaign.