The Risk and Regulation Advisory Council to be set up

The government is setting up the Risk and Regulation Advisory Council to give guidance on public risk issues for policy decision making - 21st January 2008

A new organisation to assist the UK's government in understanding 'public risk' is to be set up.

The Risk and Regulation Advisory Council (RRAC) will help the government to understand and improve the way in which 'public risk' is managed.

Gordon Brown on becoming Prime Minister wanted to ensure that policy making decisions took into consideration the whole picture surrounding 'public risk' before being made. The Better Regulation Commission (BRC) was asked to look into a way of doing this and produced the 'Public Risk - The Next Frontier for Better Regulation' report which recommends the new RRAC be set up.

The RRAC should help Health and Safety issues become part of all future policy making decisions, and hopefully prevent many incidents occurring due to poor policy guidelines. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) are responsible for accidents at work and the RRAC will initially be responsible for things like food and super bug scares, animal disease outbreaks, obesity and under-pensioned citizens.