After months of confusion, rumours, leaks and delays, regulations restricting the location of high fat, salt or sugar (HFSS) products are now in force, affecting thousands of retailers across England.

For many, hundreds of hours of planning and thousands of pounds of investment have been sunk into understanding and implementing the changes required to be compliant. So where do we stand with the regulations, what’s coming next, and what must we learn from these regulations for the future?

One of the biggest areas of confusion around the introduction of HFSS regulations has been which businesses are included and which are exempt. The government saw fit to include thousands of small businesses in the regulations by way of their affiliation with symbol groups, despite seeing them as small businesses in other policy areas, like business rates and energy.

This has led to a wave of legal opinions being sought from groups to try and get some clarity on which stores in their estates are included. All of this could have been avoided if the government had been consistent in its approach to what it considers to be a small business, and we hope new ministers, who have already extolled the virtues of supporting business and removing regulations, will accept symbol group stores as what they are: businesses run by independent retailers.

As it stands, there are now thousands of businesses that have had to reorder, refit and reimagine their stores at great cost, waiting for a potential visit from an overzealous enforcement officer with a tape measure. We learned from the pandemic that while the majority of officers are pragmatic and supportive, there will a minority looking to pull retailers up on technicalities or enforce their own interpretation of the rules (remember the Easter eggs/essential products debacle of 2020).

We’ve provided Assured Advice through the Primary Authority Scheme we run for our members. The coming weeks and months will no doubt raise more questions about the minutiae of the regulations, the spirit of the regulations, and the exemption criteria, so the work is not remotely finished on the immediate location restrictions, and there’s a good chance we’ll be having a similar conversation again in 12 months’ time on promotional restrictions.

In Wales and Scotland, where retailers have so far avoided HFSS regulations, there are active consultations considering similar regulations in each devolved administration. These consultations aren’t just a copy and paste of what England is dealing with though – both are looking at going even further. On top of the existing restrictions, both have suggested outlawing any kind of temporary price reduction on HFSS products (for example, 10% off for a promotional period). They have also proposed differing criteria on which businesses would be exempt.

The worst possible outcome for retailers and suppliers operating across the UK is a different regulatory framework in each country – there’s already enough confusion with one set of rules, but adhering to three is going to be nothing short of a nightmare.

The HFSS regulations are part of the government’s wider strategy to reduce levels of childhood obesity and improve the nation’s health, which in turn is intended to relieve pressure on the NHS. But we can’t see any solid assessment criteria for the success or failure of specific interventions, like the location restrictions that have just come into force. The problem is that if obesity rates don’t improve, the government comes to a fork in the road – either they think the restrictions don’t go far enough and come down harder on businesses, or they think the restrictions don’t actually make that much difference and abandon them altogether.

Long term, we need to know what the government considers a successful policy intervention, because for retailers so far it’s been anything but.

 

Topics