Statement: Impact assessment guidance

Statement published 19 July 2023

We make a variety of policy decisions in the interests of citizens and consumers, and where appropriate to promote competition. Our impact assessment guidance sets out our general approach to how we assess the impact of our proposed decisions.

On 17 March 2023, we published a consultation on updating our impact assessment guidance to reflect our legal obligations, best practice and our experience. On 19 July 2023, we published our statement in which we explained our decision to proceed with our proposal to update our impact assessment guidance but with some changes taking into account consultation comments. We also published our updated guidance which will apply to Ofcom projects starting on or after 19 July 2023.

The key changes from the previous version of our guidance include:

• Recognising how our duties differ across an increasingly wide range of sectors.
• Maintaining our bias against intervention while clarifying that the law may require us to intervene.
• Clarifying the circumstances in which we will, as a general rule, not carry out an impact assessment or equality impact assessment.
• Updating how we present our impact assessments to stakeholders.
• Increased recognition that qualitative impacts are an important part of assessing some policy decisions.
• Recognising that impact assessments are an important input for ex-post evaluations.
• Updating how we develop an impact assessment in light of new assessment approaches and resources.
• Updating the guidance to reference, and raise the prominence of, our current public sector equality duties and our obligations in relation to the Welsh language.