2022-03-31-accounts

Regulatory Policy Institute

Report of the Directors and Unaudited Financial Statements for the Year Ended 31 March 2022

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Company information for the Year Ended 31 March 2022

DIRECTORS:

A J Ballance P G Davies G H Downie J F Ellard N R Fincham G I Fox P J Freeman D M Gray E A Humpherson H Nixon D J Nolan J Perkins S L Rab S H Smith D W Stewart G K Yarrow

There were no additions to the list over the course of the year, and no departures.

SECRETARY: C A G Yarrow

REGISTERED OFFICE:

300 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 7ED

REGISTERED NUMBER:

02659216 (England and Wales)

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Report of the Directors for the Financial Year Ended 31 March 2022

The work of the Institute continued to be heavily disrupted in the earlier parts of the year by the Covid epidemics. The Hertford Seminars remained in abeyance, in the later months of the year more due to a lack of managerial capacity than to Covid restrictions themselves. The Annual Westminster Conference in the Spring of 2021 was cancelled. However, the Annual Oxford Conference was restored in September 2021 and, although the attendance was lower than in the pre-Covid period, which implied a still depressed income stream, many of those who did participate expressed some joy at being able to meet up, physically, again. On this basis, the conference was generally considered to be a significant success.

Background work preparing for a return to full normality continued through the year, most notably in the Institute’s Research Group, comprising those Trustees and Associates who are active in research, which is one of the two principal activities by which the Institute, as an educational charity, delivers public benefits (the other being teaching). Production of papers continued and the most significant, seven in number, were published on the Research Group’s website, freely accessible to a global readership, albeit social media indicators indicate that the bulk of that readership is located in the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

Topics covered in these papers were issues in healthcare, regulation of digital platforms, independent regulation, energy price caps, history of economic thought, climate change policy and the regulation of the provision of government statistics. The contributors to them were: Sebastian Eyre, Gerard Fox, Peter Freeman, Ed Humpherson, Professor Stephen Littlechild, Joe Perkins, David Stewart, Suzanne Rab, and George Yarrow,

In the later part of the year the income flow moved sharply upward, partly due to the September conference, but predominantly in consequence of two commissions from the Communication and Information Technology Commission (CITC) of Saudi Arabia, in support of a project in that country to establish a Regulatory Academy to a working model that is heavily influenced by the purposes and philosophy of our own Institute and is aimed at raising the human capital of the regulatory system in Saudi Arabia. The first commission was a ‘how to go about building an Academy’ research/thought piece, the second a pilot, online teaching/training course, chiefly for civil servants, but including a few regulatory affairs employees involved in regulated businesses.

As indicated in last year’s Report, it has been an intention of the Institute, in line with its educational purpose, to re-build its capacity in teaching and training – an activity that was prominent in the Institute’s early years when half the world was interested in how the UK had done things in the 1980s – and the pilot training course was the first, experimental realisation of that ambition.

Since future prospects for the supply of teaching/training and research at the end of the Financial Year were highly uncertain, and since the accounts are made up on a receipts and payments basis, the costs of the pilot training course have, in effect, been expensed in the 2021/22 accounts. The consequence is that 2021/22 accounts show another reduction in reserves, albeit of a smaller magnitude than in the previous year. It has, however, been a year of two financial parts. In the first the cash flow position was as dire as in the first Covid year, whereas by the later months the financial position had been stabilised and the groundwork had been laid for a strong recovery in 2022/23.

Last year’s confidence of the Directors that the Institute could ‘see out the epidemics’ has therefore proved justified, and this year the Directors/Trustees are confident that, with an expected uptick in activity in 2022/3, the Institute’s capacity to ‘promote the study of regulation for the public benefit’ will be further enhanced.

G K Yarrow

Treasurer and Trustee

31 January 2023

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Financial Statements

Income Statement for the Year Ended 31 March 2022

		2022	2021
		£	£
TURNOVER		116,549	250
Administrative expenses		128,582	28,084
		_	_
	_
OPERATING SURPLUS (DEFICIT)		(12,033)	(27,834)
Interest receivable		4	18
		_	_
SURPLUS/(DEFICIT) BEFORE TAX		(12,028)	(27,816)
Taxation		-	-
		_	_
SURPLUS/(DEFICIT) FOR THE YEAR		(12,028)	(27,816)
		_	_

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Financial Statements

Balance Sheet for the Year Ended 31 March 2022

	2022		2021
	£		£
FIXED ASSETS
Tangible assets		320		480
CURRENT ASSETS
Debtors	5,481		3,686
Cash at Bank	116,846		128,875
CREDITORS	1,813		179
NET CURRENT ASSETS		120,514		132,862
TOTAL ASSETS LESS
CURRENT LIABILITIES		120,834		132,862
RESERVES
Income and Expenditure Account		120,834		132.862

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Financial Statements

Notes

1. The Regulatory Policy Institute is a private company, limited by guarantee and without a share capital, registered in England and Wales.

2. Cash at bank includes a PayPal balance of £4,831 on 31 March 2022.

3. Breakdown of administrative expenses:

Salaries and pensions £26,503 Research and teaching £88,000 Venue costs £10,629 Other £ 3,450

The research and teaching expenses comprise payments to three Members of the Board for research and teaching conducted.

1. The company runs a defined benefit pension scheme through the Universities Superannuation Scheme ("USS"), of which it is a member. The USS has in recent years reported significant funding deficits of varying magnitudes which has led to increased contributions. In addition, an exit payment may be payable if the company were to leave the USS. The Directors have made no specific provision for such exit payments as they have insufficient information to assess the potential costs involved.

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Examiner’s Report

The Annual Report and Accounts for 2021/2 have been agreed by the Board, but unfortunately because of delays in the process of preparing them, there has been insufficient time to get an Examiner’s Report.

The Board fully recognizes that this deficiency needs to be remedied as soon as possible, but has judged that it is better that the Report and Accounts be submitted now, without an Examiner’s Report, than be held back until the latter is obtained.

However, if the Commission, requires that all material be submitted simultaneously, the Report and Accounts will be submitted again later.

Professor George Yarrow

Treasurer and Trustee

31 January 2023

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