Policy Brief / Briefing Note Help

Policy Briefs

Policy Briefs are public domain documents that are commonly owned and developed through a consultative process. This consultative process opens the Policy Brief to scrutiny and challenge helping to ensure rational policy options are proposed that offer the minimal cost and timely implementation.

These Policy Briefs describe the environmental impact of growing UK product stock and proposes a timetable of policies to minimize this. Presenting headline summary information evolving scenarios, projections. The summary policy timetable supports these illustrations, helping to clarifying specific actions, targets, impacts, dates and responsibilities.

Policy Briefs represent the current consensus on the issues, priorities, policy options and actions required, therefore, can be relied on to inform Government decisions

Each Policy Brief can be broken down into 4 key components.

Scope

Presents the projected consumption figures (energy, water etc) in both graphical and table format. Values are given for each scenario to the year 2020. The essential numbers table also provides estimated values (where available) for the Policy Cost and Carbon output.

Overview

Offers a snapshot of the current thinking with regards to the potential opportunities for reducing the environmental impact of the product.

Key Policy Instruments:

Highlights existing and developing policy instruments that have a potential impact on the products environmental performance, including national, international, and proposed options.

Priorities:

Taking into consideration the market conditions, technology advancement, legislation and policy development, this section highlights what MTP considers to be the key priorities that should be addressed in the near future.

Progress:

Outlines recent progress made by the MTP and other interested parties.

Targets, Strategies and Action Plans:

The ACTION PLAN is a policy timetable that holds a detailed list of key activities that need to take place to ensure the proposed Policy Scenarios’ can be achieved with minimal disruption to industry and consumers whilst achieving a maximum level of environmental benefit. The table uses the symbol ‘?’ to indicate a proposal for adoption into the Policy Brief, pending further consultation.

The table consists of 7 columns, the first of which identifies the primary objective and targets that have been identified by the consultation process.

This first column includes links to supporting material (Briefing Notes), proposes a target date by which the primary objective will be complete, and estimates the likely impact of the objective. The remaining six columns (2-7) each relate to a specific action that has been identified as essential to achieving the objective.

Critical Issues

Through the consultation process specific issues may arise that impede progress in the market transformation process, and therefore become priorities in the product sector agenda. These issues are classified as ‘critical issues’ and are identified in the critical issues table. The first column contains the reference number that is linked to the Action Plan. The second column gives an indication of the time the issue was identified. The third column offers a description of the issue, whilst the fourth column indicates the necessary action required. The final column recommends a completion date for the action

Briefing Notes

Briefing Notes (BN) are explanatory documents, expanding on the Policy Brief, containing definitive information and rationales that have been used to construct the Policy briefs. Briefing Notes may contain concise definitions, simple statements of working assumptions or they may be highly detailed documents and used in formal consultations on drafting of specific UK, EU policy measures eg. Directives on labelling, minimum standards, industry agreements etc.

Uses of Briefing Notes may include:

Supporting Information for Policy Briefs

  • Data and simple analysis, describing how that analysis was done and commenting on its reliability, and how the information should be used.
  • Intermediate analysis, including working assumptions, where firm information is weak, referencing both source data and where else that analysis or conclusions are used.

Consultation proposals

  • Negotiating briefs, which may also double as formal public consultation documents on policy proposals – aiming to deliver elements of MTP policy scenarios – and which, therefore, whose detail (implementation dates, outcomes) should provide the basis for the quantified projections.
  • Statements of strategy – similarly, to provide clear negotiating guidance on the principles that underpin MTP policy scenarios e.g. the need for voluntary or mandatory measures to address a particular issue.

Descriptions and definitions

  • Simple lists of definitions and terminology
  • Technical methodologies and their rationale
  • Descriptions of equipment and products, or statements of working assumptions on, say, technological development
  • Scenario definitions, setting out how the numerical projection has been constructed, including cross-references to other BNs where they provide the input data and rationales; providing an interpretation of features where that is helpful and generally commenting on the reliability and meaning.

Policy summaries

  • Descriptions of specific policy measures e.g. minimum energy efficiency requirements, EST product endorsement scheme, the Energy Efficiency Commitment, Enhanced Capital Allowances, public procurement etc. stating the mode of operation, how they have been treated or interpreted within MTP models together with any other cross-references which are important to understanding and to ensuring consistency – e.g. Regulatory Impact Assessments and any cost-benefit analysis that may be derived from MTP information and assessment methodologies
  • Policy descriptions – general statements of policy principles and what their relevance is, or how they have been applied or treated by MTP.

Descriptions of self-contained projects and initiatives such as UKEPIC, including comprehensive Action Plans for those initiatives.