Review of regulatory till and regulatory accounts
In October 2010, we published Commission Papers CP4/2010 and CP5/2010 inviting comments from parties on the merits of changes to the regulatory till and regulatory accounts. In publishing those papers, we indicated that future work in these areas by the Commission would depend on the feedback received from parties to the two papers and that we would set out future work plans after reviewing any responses.
Having considered the responses received to CP4/2010 and CP5/2010, we have concluded that there is merit in further work. This does not mean that any final decision to make changes has been reached. All parties, including those that chose not to respond to CP4/2010 or CP5/2010, will have further opportunities to respond to consultation papers before any changes take effect.
The initial focus of work on possible changes to the regulatory till will be on identifying if there are any candidate activities provided by the DAA that might be removed from the regulatory till. In undertaking this work, we plan to meet with respondents to CP4/2010 and review relevant developments in other jurisdictions. By the end of this year, we hope to set out a position paper outlining our current thinking. Thereafter, we hope to finalise work on determining what activities should be included in the regulatory till by the end of 2012. This should allow the DAA and interested parties plenty of time to consult on future investment needs at the airport as it pertains to investments that might be included in future regulatory asset bases. Should we conclude that changes to the regulatory till are warranted, then in 2013 we intend to work with stakeholders on identifying what transitional arrangements to make for activities that have previously been included in the regulatory till but which in future will be excluded, for example whether and how to adjust the regulatory asset base for assets no longer related to activities included in the regulatory till. This will clearly feed into the timetable for work leading to a fourth airport charges determination in 2014.
In the case of the regulatory accounts, we will arrange a series of meetings with respondents to CP5/2010 to discuss possible changes to the format of regulatory accounts. Once we are in a position to propose a revised format for such accounts, we intend to publish our proposals and invite comments from all interested parties. That paper should also set out when we expect the DAA and IAA to implement any changes agreed. We hope to be in a position to publish such proposals in the second half of this year or early in 2012.