The RPF is the first market-led fund whereby regulators and local authorities identify key issues within their areas, to remove barriers to innovation for business and help businesses get innovative products and services to market. This involves real-world delivery, cutting-edge research, testing of concepts, the opportunities within the Fund are endless. Other funds have targeted businesses however, the RPF specifically targets the areas where regulatory systems can be seen as a barrier to innovation, giving businesses more opportunities and a direct route to work with Government on improving the business environment and public policy outcomes, helping foster a pro-innovation culture and overcome risk-adversity.

Collaboration is key to success in the RPF whereby multiple parties are either linked together or come together to solve barriers identified. With every iteration of the RPF lessons learned are disseminated across public bodies, Government and published for wider application.

We are delivering a third round of the RPF, having just completed the competition stage and supporting regulators and local authorities in the development of high-quality applications where there is a market need for change. Applications will now be assessed against the competition selection criteria with selected projects announced later this year, and with project delivery starting in January 2023.

We are also about to publish our independent evaluation of the second round and share further the findings with our stakeholders. The RPF is independently reviewed combining elements of impact and process evaluation. There is a logic model used to understand outcomes along with a contribution analysis and case studies. Dissemination of findings is key to the success of the RPF programme, this is ongoing.

The RPF actively encourages collaboration and partnerships between multiple regulators and local authorities, businesses, civil society groups and academia (domestic and international) to explore cross cutting issues of mutual interest and/or provide more joined up, efficient and effective services e.g. one project launched a multi-agency advice service for water innovators. The RPF also collaborates with an independent evaluation partner to assess its impact at both project and programme level.

The regulators and local authorities benefited from the opportunity to test innovations in a risk-free environment. The RPF emphasises collaboration benefiting businesses and citizens by increasing regulation transparency and knowledge of the necessity of regulation. This ongoing collaboration and sharing of lessons learned will help innovation within regulation continue. With this, it strengthens Government’s ability to implement and continuously develop regulation.

The RPF has led to the establishment of Innovation Hubs and advisory services for business and innovators, technology driven solutions and data tools, frameworks and new regimes (some world-first), research to inform/improve regulatory approaches and new guidance or standards for business innovation.

The RPF is independently reviewed combining elements of impact and process evaluation, these include qualitative interviews, case studies and analysis of management information and project reports. Within this evaluation the RPF was seen to directly increase collaboration between regulators and sector stakeholders, helping increase confidence in regulation and the role of regulators in encouraging innovation.

Participants have also shared lessons learned from their projects which will impact the development of future innovations, thereby influencing wider regulatory practice. Given the success of projects many have been able to secure funding from core budgets to continue their RPF work.

Programme challenges included monitoring the delivery and financial spend. Ensuring that we had up to date information to assess effectiveness and timeliness of projects delivering outputs. Robust monitoring and regular meetings with projects ensured challenge was only minimal. Other challenges included when a project scope had to change, in one case, significantly due to many external and unforeseen factors including political interest, resourcing and ambitious deliverables in a short time. We overcame this by working with the project, rescaling the scope and ambition to outputs that could be used to achieve RPF aims in future work.

During the independent evaluation multiple projects mentioned that more time would have been beneficial to facilitate recruitment activities. RPF 3 has been developed to help facilitate this and ensure that they do not take away a significant proportion of project time. We are constantly evolving the RPF to incorporate feedback.

Being market-led, the quality of bids received and communication of the programme is key to the success of the RPF. In order to get a variety of bids, Ministerial support is required to boost the visibility and importance of the RPF and to obtain the funds for the programme. This in combination with strong stakeholder engagement so that regulators and local authorities understand the purpose of the RPF and the added value it provides, ensures buy-in. The independent evaluation with each round further impresses the importance of the programme and disseminates lessons learned from it.

Each project requires a significant time commitment to understand and identify barriers to innovation, to bid, undertake an RPF project, evaluate, learn from previous work and disseminate learnings.

These aspects and the motivation to remove the barriers to innovation and help businesses get innovative products and services to market, are key to the success of the RPF.

Regulation can be seen as a barrier to innovation, this is why programmes like the RPF are key to showing regulation can keep pace with innovation and enable it. As well as international interest in the RPF model, we are aware of 3 international schemes that bear some similarities to RPF, but with lower levels of funding and a narrower focus on sandboxing. This view of regulation being a barrier is not unique to the UK, all governments have potential to increase business and consumer confidence in regulation. For this, schemes like the RPF where funding is used as an incentive are ideal.

To successfully replicate the RPF the following conditions are required:

• A scheme that emphasises collaboration
• Supportive governance
• Sector wide expertise and an appetite for innovation
• Ring fenced targeted funding
• Eagerness to continuously improve and disseminate lessons learned

At project level there is potential to scale up and spread best practice including, internationally.

From the initial conception of the RPF we tested the value of such a fund with stakeholders. This and constantly incorporating lessons learned was vital to ensuring that the fund with each iteration was adapting, improving and achieving overall aims for both Government and stakeholders. It showed that Government was taking a supportive role giving stakeholders the freedom to innovate without being overly prescriptive and supporting delivery.

Without the RPF funding, a lot of projects would not have happened and those that would have happened, would not have had such an emphasis on collaboration. Collaboration was key to the success of RPF projects and this increased collaboration is expected to continue past the duration of the RPF projects. In addition to this, the flexible funding of the RPF helped free up resource to innovate, both within regulator and local authorities and amongst their stakeholders.

One example of an RPF project is the CAA’s to establish a test and approval regime for crash-protected containers. In 2021, the CAA’s Innovation Hub identified compelling use cases for drones carrying ‘dangerous goods’, such as the distribution of high-value chemotherapy drugs within minutes instead of hours.. As the CAA relies on income from charges levied on the airline industry but not on drone operators, there is no expectation from airlines that these funds should be invested in areas that have no impact on them.

RPF funding allowed the CAA to dedicate time to an innovative and collaborative project with the industry. The CAA made a significant achievement for their industry through successfully producing the world’s first test procedure for crash protected containers which will allow drones to carry sensitive or dangerous goods such as medical products to remote areas.

A link to further information on the breadth of projects RPF covers is in the link section.