"For more almost 15 years now the official inspection creed in the Netherlands has been that inspection should be risk based. In this article we have a first look into what has been implemented. We observe (a) that the national policy formulated in 2005 that inspections should be risk-based, step by step has been altered into a focus on indepence of inspections and stronger sanctions, (b) that only a few inspectorates claim to have implemented risk-based inspection and (c) that those inspectorates do not operate in line with their own claims. Organising risk-based inspection is clearly a challenge for Dutch inspectorates. Some barriers hindering the implementation of risk-based inspection in the Netherlands are identified. The first being that there is no consensus as to what risk actually is. A second that inspectorates actually have no incentive to implement risk-based inspection. We conclude that this line of research is necessary to better understand the implementation process of risk-based inspections in order to better use public resources."

Support: Digital