Glossary

Competent Authority: A regulator who administers one or more formality in scope of the Services Directive. Note: Local Authorities are "competent authorities" within the Directive, but are often separated and termed "local authorities" in our guidance, newsletters, and other publications, as they deal with a vast number of formalities in a delimited area, whereas (other) competent authorities typically deal with a lower number, across the country.

EEA: European Economic Area = EU member states + Liechtenstein + Norway + Iceland.

ELMS: Electronic License Management System: the authority-facing part of the portal which will allow authorities to configure their applications if hosted on ELMS (e.g. precise fee, contact details, whether tacit authorisation applies and determination time, etc for each application) as well as retrieve applications and supporting documentation, and communicate securely with the service provider.

Formality: This term is used to describe the variety of applications, permits, notifications dealt with by regulators.

IMI: Internal Market Information system is the European Commission-supplied system that allows one regulator to talk to another throughout Europe.

Local Government Regulation (formerly LACORS): Local Government Regulation, as part of the LGA Group, is the local government central body responsible for overseeing local authority regulatory and related services in the UK

Local Authority: Within our guidance and publication, this describes Local Government authorities, either single-tier (Unitaries, devolved) or two tiers (shire, districts, etc). Local authorities are "competent authorities" but our publications often refer to them separately (see "competent authority" entry).

NLP: National Liaison Point in BIS whose role will be to assist authorities.

PLP: Primary Liaison Point - A senior officer in the authority who will be the main recipient for BIS information. The role consists of disseminating the information from BIS and as such, acts as a "conduit" between BIS and the authority. Whilst the PLP is not expected to carry out any implementation work themselves, they are key in ensuring all relevant stakeholders are on board, including licencing, environmental health, legal, finance, ICT, and Members.

PSC: Point of Single Contact: The UK web portal hosting information and applications for formalities. The public-facing side of the portal is called UKWelcomes and the authority-facing side of the portal (used in particular to retrieve applications and communicate with the service provider) is called ELMS (see ELMS entry).

Service Provider: A person or company wishing to establish a service business in the UK. From the authority's point of view, the service provider is a formality applicant.

Last updated: 17 Aug 2010, 14:34