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A body of research carried out at Sheffield Hallam University has led to significant changes in the accounting requirements for charities in England and Wales. Two sets of impact are presented: (A) simplified audit requirements for smaller charities from 2008/09 through enhancement of an alternative regime of `independent examination' (IE), and (B) Government acceptance in 2012/13 of the case for further simplifications in charity regulation. Over the period 2009-13 at least £15 million of charity resources has been released from mandatory audits for charities to spend on work with beneficiaries. Further benefits to the sector will follow from the latest developments.
For the past decade, a research programme led by Professor Noel Hyndman has investigated accountability and governance in the UK charity sector. Outputs from the research have shaped the national draft reporting and accounting framework, Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP), which provides a mechanism for charities to meet legal accounting requirements and provides consistency in the sector's interpretation of accounting standards. The new framework will apply to more than 200,000 charities in the UK, which have an estimated total annual income of over £60 billion.
By exploring the social and economic effects of cuts in funding for legal aid, this research directly influenced legislation aimed at preserving legal aid for welfare benefit appeals. This was a major victory for campaigners who cited the research to lobby against cuts proposed by the 2011 Legal Aid Bill. The research informed a proposed House of Lords amendment to the Bill. Although the amendment was turned back by the House of Commons, welfare benefit appeals on points of law were discussed during the second reading and retained within the scope of legal aid funding.
The impact relates to research carried out by Professor John Peysner, and subsequently with Dr Angus Nurse, into three linked areas of access to justice: (a) the cost of litigation, in particular fixed fees, budgeting and contingency fees; (b) the financing of claims, in particular Contingency Legal Aid Funds and Third Party Financing; and (c) forms of dispute resolution and redress. Litigation is of major importance in underpinning civil society, and as a global business, and changes in the costs and financing of it will potentially impact on all practising lawyers. The research has had impact on practice developments, government policy, and statutory and procedural rules of court, particularly in connection with the influential Lord Justice Jackson's Review of Litigation Costs(2009). The impact has been at a national and international level.
The impact of a research programme into quality assessment measures for publicly funded legal services has been the establishment of a peer review programme for all civil and criminal lawyers operating in Scotland, England and Wales. This programme has ensured that the quality of service provided by legal aid lawyers in Scotland is consistently high, with only 10% of providers failing routine reviews. Moreover, the errors that do emerge are primarily administrative failings rather than poor legal advice. The Scottish model has been the basis for pilot projects in the Netherlands, Finland and Moldova, and has been drawn on for a peer review programme for all Dutch notaries.
The underpinning research arose from an ESRC-funded project on the "Optimal Design of Decision and Enforcement Procedures for Competition Policy" by Professor David Ulph (St Andrews) and Professor Yannis Katsoulacos (AUEB). This influenced the penalty policies of competition authorities in two countries: the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) in the UK and the Autorite de la Concurrence (AdC) in France. For OFT it contributed to the formulation of revised penalty guidelines, specifically a proposed increase in baseline penalty from 10% to 30%. For AdC it impacted on the formulation of the first penalty guidelines they published. Thus our research had impact on the only two major Competition Authorities in the world who revised penalty policy in last 5 years.