Reviewing Consumer Information

Following extensive research, the Government has committed to improving and clarifying the regulated information consumers receive from organizations they deal with every day.

Regulated information is all around us – from credit agreements to nutritional panels on cereal boxes. The nation’s health and well-being depend on this information being clear, accurate and easily accessible for everyone.

It costs businesses about £1.5bn to produce the information every year. But a review by the Better Regulation Executive (BRE) and National Consumer Council (NCC) found that it often doesn’t achieve its goals. This is because the content is too long or complex, and so not easily understood.

Review and report

As part of the review, the BRE and NCC ran numerous focus groups and held more than 60 stakeholder interviews in the spring of 2007. They then compiled a report called ‘Warning: too much information can harm’, which detailed several ways to:

  • ensure information is used where it can make a difference
  • help consumers make choices, while minimizing costs for business
  • make information more clearly accessible, with less jargon
  • improve information in specific areas such as financial products and recycling
  • test and evaluate information more effectively.

Please find below a link to the report:

Advice for policy-makers

The BRE and NCC have also published a guide to help policy-makers decide when, where and how to use regulated information.

The final report and guide build on the areas for discussion set out in the joint BRE/NCC interim report.

The study also resulted in the publication of a report by Vanilla Research.

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