Today we’ve published a response to our consultation on introducing new prioritisation principles to guide our work.

The principles were developed in line with our five-year strategy 2014 – 2018, which is our public commitment to ‘Having more Impact’ and ‘Being more Proactive’ in how we regulate. It expresses our ambition to make every UK ad a responsible ad.

Under these prioritisation principles we will:

• consider what harm or detriment has occurred or might occur;

• balance the risk of taking action versus inaction;

• consider the likely impact of our intervention; and

• consider what resource would be proportionate to the problem to be tackled.

They will help us decide what resource we commit, or activity we undertake, in response to issues identified either through complaints or other forms of information, e.g. research or intelligence from another regulator.

This more proactive and targeted approach will allow us to have the biggest impact on the issues that matter most, benefitting consumers, society and responsible advertisers alike.

We launched the consultation in November 2014, following pre-consultation with other regulatory bodies, consumer groups and business groups. We’re grateful to those who responded and are satisfied, based on the feedback we’ve received, that we’d identified the appropriate prioritisation principles to help guide the allocation of our regulatory resources.

How we will implement the principles

Now that our new prioritisation principles are live, we’ll be developing new ways of working to put them into practice. We’re just starting that phase of work, but any significant policy changes, including what they’ll mean for those we regulate, will be communicated before they come on stream.

This will be a gradual process, allowing us to build towards becoming a more proactive regulator without putting at risk what we already do well, which will continue to underpin our work in future.

Read our full regulatory statement

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