Our approach

In 2023 we are focused on strengthening the delivery of the important regulatory goals in our strategy – for quality and standards, equality of opportunity, and enabling regulation – because these create value for students and taxpayers. We need to make sure that our work in these areas is properly resourced and that we put in place more permanent arrangements, having made lots of temporary appointments in the transition between chief executives.

We’ve also learned from experience that we need to be more flexible in how we resource our work. This means having appropriate capacity at senior levels to remove decision making bottlenecks and the ability to scale up and scale back resources allocated to project and routine operational work. 

To help achieve these things, the directors’ group, in consultation with PCS, is making some important changes over the coming months.

Principles

We have developed a set of principles which underpin the changes and support the strategic shift towards more active regulation of providers.

 

Our principles

  • We need to be focused on the delivery of our core regulatory functions, as set out in our strategy – quality and standards; equality of opportunity; enabling regulation – because these create value for students and taxpayers.
  • Teams, especially those delivering our core regulatory functions, need to be sufficiently resourced within the available funding envelope, to deliver our ambitious strategy and the impact we want to see for students.
  • We need to maximise the impact we deliver from our fixed resourcing envelope and ensure we use our resources efficiently and effectively.
  • We need a structure and mechanisms that proactively deliver a flexible resourcing model to ensure we can allocate resources to priorities and further professionalise our line and activity management.
  • Directors, senior leaders, and all staff need to have clear and transparent accountability for delivering their responsibilities.
  • We need to build on the work we have done to ensure everybody delivering, and supporting, core regulatory activities develop their regulatory expertise so that the capability of these teams, and the rest of the organisation grows.
  • We have tested different models for delivering our work and should build on what we know works best.