Who we are?
The Guernsey Competition and Regulatory Authority was established under the Guernsey Competition and Regulatory Authority Ordinance, 2012 and is an independent body with an independent Board.
Responsibilities
Our responsibilities encompass competition law enforcement across the economic markets of Guernsey and the economic regulator of three specific sectors. In doing so our overarching aim is to ensure that markets work well for consumers, consumers being a general term embracing a range of end users including households, businesses and Government.
Alongside our role in the enforcement of competition law, which includes reviewing notifiable mergers and acquisitions, we invest in raising awareness and understanding of competition policy, and legal and structural market issues. Through these initiatives we look to assist market participants so they are better informed of their rights and responsibilities, and Government officials and policy makers can better appraise risks to the ability of markets to work well. Carrying out this proactive role improves the chances of businesses delivering choice, quality, innovation and lower prices and reduces the likelihood of enforcement action due to lack of appreciation of the consequences of business decisions that contravene the law.
In our role as an economic regulator, we have certain legal powers that allow us to intervene in specific sectors of the economy where competition and therefore choice tends to be limited and to “stand in the gap” as a proxy for the competitive pressures that would otherwise be present. Telecoms, electricity and post are all subject to economic regulation and when exercising these economic regulatory powers, we act in a forward looking way to protect households, businesses and Government caused by a lack of competition. Examples of such forward looking action include, setting price controls, and imposing service standards.