employed are more difficult to implement. The self employed a strictly governed by a plethora of regulations. Any CoP would take second place behind any legal requirement to operate the business in line with current regulations.
CoP should have built into them a structured conciliation process that is transparent. A conciliation process should be conducted by the industry and not a regulator. With all voluntary codes either party can refuse to comply with conciliation and any result would not be binding on either party. As the conciliation process should be conducted by the industry, who pays for this? In a self employed situation the problem is exasperated.
This is why imposing CoP on the self employed is fraught with problems.
I quote from above “should have unanimous support from industry leaders before it is presented to rank and file members” This draft does not have unanimous support.
The current draft has still to be assessed by the legal department at Unite the Union, but our members’ opinions to date reject this draft.
We at Dib-Unite feel that this draft has not been approved by consultation with associations’ membership; it has been approved by committee.
Considering the take up of the existing code of practice I see this going the same way. There is very little support from the rank and file ADI’s for a code of practice.
The following is from a Government web site
"The Government supports flexible, non-regulatory approaches to ensuring consumers are empowered and protected and law-abiding businesses are not hindered by excessive regulation."
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/31534/12-543-enhancing-consumer-confidence-effective-enforcement-consultation.pdf
ADI’s see any code of practice as a hindrance to the day to day running of their businesses many of which have successfully run their business for longer than the DSA has been in existence.
The business dealings of ADI’s are outside the remit of the DSA.
The DSA already have place the term ‘fit and proper’ this covers everything that is currently being mentioned in the latest draft CoP.