Speaking at the Local and National Regulators’ Conference, last month, Michael Gibbons OBE said: “We need time to do a good job. You, the departments concerned, deserve that we do a good job.”

Gibbons added that: “The message to departments who have particularly large, complex issues and are rolling towards this process is: do engage with us earlier, let us have a sight of draft impact assessments, let us get our head around the issues, because otherwise the risk is that we simply won’t have time to do the job that we’re required to do.”

The Regulatory Policy Committee has been tasked with scrutinising all the impact assessments conducted by departments considering introducing new regulations. Its first set of findings revealed that many such assessments are inadequate.

Gibbons also criticised Whitehall for having a culture of regulation. “One of the first recourses is to regulate and that’s a very difficult culture to change,” he said. “I think quite often, regulation is regarded as a lower-risk option than some of the alternatives, but it’s not costless: our job is to look at the costs and the benefits.”

He was joined in his criticism by Philip Rycroft, the chief executive of the Better Regulation Committee and director-general of innovation and enterprise at the department for Business, Innovation, and Skills, who said that civil servants believe that regulation “demonstrates activity”.

“Producing a regulation in response to a policy issue is evidence that we have done something – even if there’s no evidence that having done something will make any difference,” Rycroft added.