This article goes further than how to use the Rio Legal Register, it also talks about some best practice ideas
Introduction
A legal register is a tool that is used to manage an organisations legal compliance. The register outlines all the relevant legislation which applies to the organisation's products and operations. It is an important component of any Environmental Management System.
The Legal Register and the Aspects & Impacts Register are also interlinked and work together to help mitigate the organisations environmental risk.
Within Rio, you are able to easily populate and maintain your Legal Register to ensure the organisation is kept up to date of all applicable legislation.
How do I navigate to this page?
To access the Legal Register, click on the ‘Governance’ tab on the left-hand menu Rio. From there, select ‘Legislation’.
When you have arrived at this page, you will see a library of regulations which can be filtered by its title, review date, compliance status, flagged status and country of applicability.
What are the components of a Legal Register?
Within the Rio platform, there are 7 components to each entry within the Legal Register, which are listed below.
Synopsis: this is a brief summary of the applicable legislation being referred to in the entry. This is a non-editable field and gets updated when there are changes or amendments to pieces of legislation. When a significant change is made to a piece of law it will be 'flagged for for review' and will be identified by an icon in the legal register, along with an alert within the home page 'Governance' column. Once a user has reviewed a flagged piece of legislation they can clear the flag using the appropriate button in the top right hand corner of the legislation item:
Applicability Statement: this is where users (dependant on the subscription and user access rights) can enter information as to how a piece of legislation is applicable to its organisation. It can include information on which activities are applicable and the control measures in place to mitigate compliance risks.
Scope: this drop down filter allows a users to associate a specific pieces of legislation to a number of different functional or geographical areas of their organisation by Department, Location, Tag or Region. Once associated users can then filter from the main Legal Register.
Links: this provides a hyperlink to the relevant piece of legislation from GOV.UK so that you can read and understand the actual piece of law.
Status: the status refers to the organisations level of compliance with the legislation. There are 6 stages to select from: compliant, compliance risk, not compliant, not applicable, indirectly applicable and to be determined. Users are able to assign their own compliance status based on their assessment of the legislation.
Review Date: this is where you can insert a date for the team to review the entry to ensure that it is still applicable or make adjustments if updates have been made by the Government. You will have to make an assessment on what an appropriate review date is for your board. Users will receive alters in the home page Governance column for any pieces of law that are approaching, or have passed their review by dates.
Attached Documents: this allows you to attach any relevant information that may be applicable.
How do I maintain our Legal Register?
We recommend that you first review all current entries to ensure that it is or it is not applicable to your organisation.
If it is applicable to your organisation, you can simply keep the entry and update the Review Date. It is important to select a review date which is material to your organisation. You will get an update close to review date, as a reminder.
If the legislation is not applicable to your organisation, you can adjust the ‘Status’ to ‘Not Applicable’. However, if you think that the legislation may become applicable in the future, you can adjust the review date as needed to ensure you get a reminder to review the applicability in the future.
Once this has been completed users can then filter their legal register based on the following criteria:
- Review Date
- Compliance Status
- Country List
- Flagged
Please note the Rio will remember the filter options you last selected when you return to the legal register. This is to help users who do not want to have to reset their preferred filter , i.e. removing 'not applicable' item each time they return to the page.
What do I do if we are non-compliant of have a compliance risk?
If you have determined that your organisation is non-compliant or at risk of compliance for a piece of applicable legislation, it is recommended to create a task within Rio. You are able to create a task within each relevant entry by selecting the blue ‘Create Task’ button on the top right-hand corner. The task should outline the steps required to become compliant.
Once you submit the task, you will be able to view all the tasks you have created in the ‘Tasks’ tab in the right-hand main column.
What is the Rio legal update service?
As legislation can be altered and updated over the years, it is important to maintain those updates within your organisation’s legal register. To make this easier, Rio’s legal update service will notify you if a piece of legislation that is applicable to your organisation has been changed. It will be flagged so you are immediately aware that you should review the legislation and make any necessary changes.