Question to the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, what the budget outturn of the Regulatory Innovation Office was in 2024-25 and 2025-26; what its budget is for 2026-27; how many staff it employs; and what key performance indicators it reports against.

The Regulatory Innovation Office (RIO) was announced in October 2024, with work undertaken to operationalise it. Consequently, no separate RIO outturn is available for 2024–25. Its 2025–26 actual spend was £7.8 million. The UK Government has announced around £70 million of regulatory innovation funding over this Spending Review period. RIO is a multidisciplinary team of around 40 officials.

RIO assesses whether its work with regulators is making a difference in three ways: whether a barrier has been removed or clarified; whether regulators are behaving differently as a result, and whether the improvement is sustained and supports sector growth.