The Competition and Markets Authority said on Wednesday it has removed 23 of the 33 market remedies it reviewed, retained six and removed two in part.
Final decisions cover 31 of the 33. The other two, the Retail Banking Market Investigation Order and the Private Motor Insurance Market Investigation Order, are still being considered “given the range of views received”, with an update due in November.
Both orders were among four that the CMA proposed in August to remove in part, alongside home credit and certain soft drinks measures.
The August proposal named the extended warranties order for domestic electrical goods, the package holiday and tour operator orders and the BBC’s on-air promotion of its magazines among the 23 remedies to be removed as redundant.
Juliette Enser, the CMA’s Executive Director of Enforcement and Markets, said at that stage that removing such measures would “help reduce the burden on businesses” and let the CMA concentrate on the protections that matter most.
Market remedies are the orders and undertakings put in place after market investigations to fix competition problems. Businesses have to spend resources complying with them, and the CMA or other bodies must monitor them, which is why the CMA reviewed whether each was still needed.
The 33 remedies were made between 1987 and 2017.
They made up 60 per cent of all CMA market remedies in place, and the CMA picked them out because some may have been superseded by new laws and regulations or by technology that has changed how people buy goods and services.
The two remedies removed in part are the Home Credit Market Investigation Order and the Carbonated Drinks Undertakings 1993 given by Coca-Cola and Schweppes Beverages.
In August the CMA proposed that, for home credit, Parts 2, 4 and 6 and Articles 30, 31 and 32 should go and all other parts stay.
Six remedies stay in force. The August proposal listed those as current account switching services, local bus services, two measures on liquefied petroleum gas used as domestic heating fuel, and two soft drinks measures.
For consumers, that means the protections around switching current accounts, bus services and LPG supply are kept. Firms bound by the removed orders no longer have to comply with them.
The review began on 19 January, when the CMA launched a consultation on whether any of the 33 remedies were no longer appropriate. That consultation closed on 2 March, the provisional decision followed on 12 August, and responses to it were due by 11 September.
The CMA’s case timetable says it expects to publish its decision on the retail banking and private motor insurance orders in November.