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The National Archives, legislation.gov.uk

Maintains the text in force

The official statute book of the United Kingdom, run by The National Archives. It serves every Act of Parliament and every UK statutory instrument, and for most of them it serves a revised text maintained by an editorial team rather than the text as enacted. One provision at a time is addressable: legislation.gov.uk/<type>/<year>/<number>/<section|regulation|schedule|article>/<n>, with /part/<n> under a schedule and /made for the original of a statutory instrument. That shape is what makes a statute book this size readable - section 3 of the Immigration Act 1971 is 61,000 characters where the Act entire is unusable. Every provision page prints a status box stating the date to which it is up to date, a Changes to Legislation disclaimer, and, where there are any, a list of effects the editorial team has not yet applied.

Maintains the current text of the law as amended, so you can read a provision as it stands today rather than reconstructing it from amendments.

www.legislation.gov.uk

Cannot be cited for

Its consolidation date is not an editorial date but the date of the request, so two provisions of the same Act read a day apart carry different cut-offs, and the cut-off must be taken from each page rather than from the Act. It carries no Immigration Rules: the Rules are laid before Parliament under section 3(2) of the Immigration Act 1971 and published by the Home Office, and nothing in them is on this site. Some instruments are served only as made, with no revised text at all, and the site says so on the page - the Driving Licences (Exchangeable Licences) Order 1984 is one, and its electronic text was contributed by Westlaw from the printed copy. Where a page lists outstanding effects, the text shown is known to be behind its own amendments, and where an amending provision was never commenced the page lists an effect that will never arrive: section 6 of the British Nationality Act 1981 carries effects from a 2009 Act whose amending provisions are themselves prospectively repealed. It is not a source for what a department does, for fees set administratively, or for any external document an instrument incorporates by reference.

Re-check every

90 days

Publication rhythm

Revised text is updated continuously by an editorial team with a backlog the site publishes against each affected provision. New Acts and statutory instruments appear within days of being made.

Re-check triggers

a new Finance Act, which can amend Schedule 45 to the Finance Act 2013 · a new Immigration Act or Nationality Act amending the Immigration Act 1971 or the British Nationality Act 1981 · an amending order under section 108(2) of the Road Traffic Act 1988 designating a country for licence exchange · an amendment to the Immigration (Health Charge) Order 2015 changing the surcharge · an amendment to the Customs (Reliefs from a Liability to Import Duty and Miscellaneous Amendments) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020 naming a new version of the UK Reliefs document · the status box on a cited provision changing from no known outstanding effects to a list of them

Facts resting on this publisher · 9