Legislative & regulatory drafting · 03
Policies, standard operating procedures and internal instruments
Internal policy instruments drafted to the organisation’s own framework and anchored to their source — drawn from the policy…
Internal policy instruments drafted to the organisation’s own framework and anchored to their source — drawn from the policy library.
Any organisation adopting, replacing or rationalising a policy framework.
A policy copied from another organisation satisfies the people who must follow it and fails the person who will one day read it against you, because it describes controls that do not exist here.
The law it sits under
The framework this work answers to.
An internal instrument binds because something authorises it. For a public entity that chain runs from the enabling Act through the Public Finance Management Act 1 of 1999 and the Treasury Regulations to a delegation and a resolution; for a municipality through the Local Government: Municipal Finance Management Act 56 of 2003; for a company through the Memorandum of Incorporation and a board resolution under the Companies Act 71 of 2008. An instrument that cannot be traced back to that chain is a suggestion.
How the engagement runs
What you are committing to.
Each instrument is drafted to the organisation’s own framework rather than from a template: its enabling Act, its MOI or constitution, its delegations, and the instruments already in force. Every one is delivered with the resolution that brings it into force, a named owner, a review date and the record that proves adoption — because on the day it matters the question is never whether the policy exists but whether it was in force.
Standard operating procedures fail in the opposite direction to policies. A policy is usually too vague to breach; an SOP is usually so specific that the organisation breaches its own procedure weekly and creates a record of non-compliance. The drafting job is to fix the standard at the level the organisation can actually hold.
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