Introduction:
According to the Finnish Consumer Safety Act, providers of leisure services must ensure that the service will not pose a danger to consumers’ health and safety. Since 2016, The Finnish Safety and Chemicals Agency (Tukes) has been responsible for the surveillance of the compliance with the Act. Leisure service sector in Finland is wide and fragmented, including services from playgrounds via motorsport events to outdoor and water activities with individual circumstances. Service providers are both public and private organisations, most of which are small enterprises. Training and education of the service providers vary, and many do not know their statutory safety obligations. Traditionally, service providers' attitude towards the regulator has been determined by fear of sanctions and cooperation has been scarce.

Objectives:
The aim is to discuss how Tukes has changed the traditional way of enforcing the law towards Cooperative Regulatory Approach (CRA) to promote injury prevention and consumer safety in leisure services.

Methods:
The development and findings of CRA are based on Tukes’ surveillance data on leisure services between 2016 – 2022 in Finland. The development process and toolbox of CRA are discussed through five case studies: 1) 1461 safety management inspections to leisure services, 2) 2235 incident notifications from service providers, consumers and others, 3) new safety management tools for service providers for e.g. self-assessment of legal obligations, hazard identification and accident records, 4) co-creation of sector-specific safety guidelines for leisure services between regulators, service providers, trade associations and other stakeholders, and 5) 364 online and live training sessions.

Results:
Each of the five case studies have a different setup, focus and outcomes of cooperation. Together they present CRA as a risk-based and case-specific collaboration, which encourages, advices and nudges each service provider onwards from their current standpoint, first to comply the minimal legal requirements and then to continuously develop safety management procedures. It promotes open dialogue and mutual learning. Contrary to common belief, CRA does not exclude the use of hard regulatory measures.

Conclusion:
CRA uses multiple methods to improve safety awareness, knowledge and practices in leisure services, which consequently will enhance injury prevention and consumer safety in the long term, as the root causes of the safety incidents in services lay in social processes, procedures and organisation culture.

Keywords: regulation, leisure services, safety of services, consumer safety

Finnish Safety and Chemicals Agency Tukes - Tampere - - - Finland