WP5 Social Science - The future of food regulation

Calling off from C425727 Research: Social Science Call-Off.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA)'s Future Food Regulation (FFR) programme aims to deliver a regulatory system that is effective, sustainable and trusted, ensuring food is safe and is what it says it is. The programme aims to establish a national approach to regulating large food retailers, rather than at a local level. Alongside this, the programme aims to implement improvements at the Local Regulation and Online Regulation level, as well as enhance and ensure food business Registration, Enforcement and the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (FHRS) works alongside regulatory changes. A central Guidance hub is also being developed. A programme and workstream-level Theory of Change (ToC) has consequently been developed, which articulates the problems the programme seeks to address and the outcomes it intends to achieve.

Following ToC development, the FSA now requires a comprehensive evidence review to establish a clear and defensible rationale for intervention across the programme. This should systematically evidence programme-level and workstream-level problem statements and identify any evidence gaps. Then identify relevant market, behavioural, regulatory and government failures, to assess whether government (FSA) intervention is justified. The outputs will directly support policy development, economic appraisal, stakeholder engagement, and future business case development.