Update status of legislation

Work on updating the primary legislation on SLD is continually in progress. This page explains how to determine the point in time to which any given item of legislation has been revised (its 'update status') and also how to obtain details of any effects that have not yet been applied.

The information on this page relates only to those types of legislation that are maintained on SLD in revised form. Those types are listed in Help under the title 'Legislation - Types of Legislation on SLD – Primary Legislation (Revised)'. They are referred to here simply as 'revised legislation'.

All revised legislation has been updated with effects of legislation made up to 2002* (for Northern Ireland statutes to 2005).

There are approximately 5,000 items of revised legislation currently held on SLD and these have all been updated with any effects on them contained in legislation made or enacted at any time before the end of 2002* (or, in the case of Northern Ireland revised statutes, before the end of 2005).

*(But NOTE that some effects of legislation made or enacted in 2002 that were not in force at the end of 2002 have not yet been applied. In such cases there is a note reading “prospective (not applied)” against each relevant entry in the Tables of Legislative Effects. These effects will be applied to each affected Act at the same time as other effects for the year in which they come into force.)

Many of these are also fully up to date.

Approximately half of all items of revised legislation on SLD already incorporate any effects on them contained in legislation made or enacted up to the present.

For the remainder there are still effects outstanding.

For the remaining items of revised legislation there are effects in one or more of the years from 2003 to the current year that have not yet been applied.

You will be told of any outstanding effects when you access an item of legislation.

A warning notice will appear on the 'Results within legislation' page listing the years for which there are outstanding effects on that legislation. If no warning notice appears, you may assume that the legislation has been revised with any effects so far recorded (but see below on timescales for recording the effects of newly enacted legislation).

You can obtain lists of any outstanding effects.

The effects on legislation recorded for each of the years from 2002 to the current year are listed in the Tables of Legislative Effects. Taken together, SLD and the tables will enable you to obtain a complete picture of all the effects on any given item of revised legislation held on SLD to date (subject to the note below on the effects of newly enacted legislation). The tables will also tell you whether those effects have been applied to SLD. Please go to the tables for instructions on how to use them.

The effects of newly enacted legislation will be recorded as soon as possible after publication.

There may, however, be a delay of a few days (up to two weeks in some cases) between the legislation being published on the website and the effects of it appearing in the 'Tables of legislative effects'.

A small number of Acts have not yet been loaded onto the new SLD system.

There are currently 10 Acts that we have been unable to load so far due to a variety of outstanding issues. As these issues are resolved, those Acts will be added to SLD. The outstanding Acts are listed in the table below.

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