Regulatory Innovation Office

The Regulatory Innovation Office (RIO) is a unit within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) which aims to improve the regulatory environment for innovation and new technologies.

Created in October 2024, the RIO fulfils a Labour manifesto commitment and is chaired on a part-time basis by Lord Willetts, a former Conservative science minister. 

The RIO’s work centres on three main areas. The first is knowledge: improving government understanding of the regulatory barriers that hold back innovation. The second is strategy: setting clear priorities for regulatory innovation in line with the government’s Industrial Strategy. The third is capability building, which involves working with regulators to ensure they have the tools needed to support innovation, including access to some additional funding, although a dedicated budget has not yet been defined.

The RIO also has four initial sector focuses: drones and other autonomous technology, engineering biology, space, and AI and digital in healthcare.

The government has primarily emphasised the increased speed at which the RIO can help get innovative new products and services to market, reducing the burden of red tape that companies face. It will also improve how regulators work together when their responsibility for new innovation overlaps. A further focus of the RIO is to identify where specific regulations act as a barrier, because they are either outdated or need reforming to allow a new innovation to reach the market.

The RIO has incorporated the functions of the Regulatory Horizons Council, an arm’s-length body set up to identify how new technology interacts with the regulatory system, as well as the Regulatory Pioneers Fund, a small pot of capital for capacity building among regulators.

Further reading

• Regulatory Innovation Office — Regulatory Innovation Office: One Year On

• Andrew Bennett — Making the Regulatory Innovation Office a Success