What data is available?

Information on the extent and limitations of the data that is available.

Legislation Text Bulk Dataset - Data Completeness

Enacted - Print 

All documents published from 2011 onwards will be available. Some data is available before this date however there may be some legislation documents missing from the dataset.

Enacted 

For most legislation types the dataset will contain all legislation made and officially published from 1988 onwards. Before 1988 legislation publishing was an entirely paper based process. Some enacted pre-1988 legislation has been digitised but the dataset will not contain all legislation ever made. There are a few exceptions to this rule, UK Local Acts are only complete from 1991 onwards and Northern Ireland Statutory Rules are only complete from 1996 onwards. Non-print secondary legislation (documents that government departments have classed as so temporary or local in nature that they do not require official publication) will only be available in the Original King’s Printer PDF/Enacted -Print data formats.

Revised 

Datasets will contain revised versions of all UK primary legislation that was at least partially in force on our general UK base date 01/02/1991. Legislation that was wholly repelled before this date will not be held in this dataset. This applies to the following legislation types:

  • UK Public General Acts (UKPGA)
  • Acts of the Scottish Parliament (ASP)
  • Acts of the National Assembly for Wales (ANAW)
  • Measures of the National Assembly for Wales (MWA)
  • Church Measures (UKCM)
  • Acts of the Old Scottish Parliament 1424-1707 (AOSP)
  • Acts of the English Parliament 1267-1706 (AEP)
  • Acts of the Old Irish Parliament 1495-1800 (AIP)
  • Acts of the Parliament of Great Britain 1707-1800 (APGB)

There are a small number of exceptions to this rule where documents are unavailable as a digital version of an acceptable quality cannot be provided.

Datasets will contain revised versions of all primary legislation that specifically applies to Northern Ireland that were at least partially in force on our Northern Ireland base date 01/01/2006. Northern Ireland legislation that was wholly repelled before this date will not be held in this dataset. This applies to the following legislation types:

  • Acts of the Northern Ireland Assembly (NIA)
  • Northern Ireland Orders in Council (NISI)
  • Measures of the Northern Ireland Assembly 1974 (MNIA)
  • Acts of the Northern Ireland Parliament 1921-1972 (APNI)

Historical revised versions are available from base date until the present day, e.g. for a 1925 UKPGA that was in force on 01/02/1991 there will be a 1991 version that incorporates all amendments up to 1991 then versions representing any subsequent changes from 1991 to 2019.

There can be a delay between new amendments to existing legislation being identified and carried through to the text on the website. The status of amendments to be applied to each document will be highlighted on the website by the “changes to legislation” banner at the top of the screen when viewing the document content. Outstanding effects will be included in the CLML XML metadata at the beginning of documents from the website API (outstanding effects metadata is not currently included in the bulk download document versions).

A small number of legislation documents are available in a revised format from other document types not listed above but these datasets will not be complete

Data Completeness of Legislation Amendment Datasets

The following table looks at the data completeness of the legislation amendment datasets. The first column tells you which legislation type an amendment is being applied to and the second column tells you which publishing year the amending document has to be for the dataset to be complete i.e. if the year given in the cell is 1994, then all amending documents published after that year will have a complete dataset.

Legislation Type Amending document publication year 
To UK Public General Acts 1994
To UK Local Acts 2013
To Acts of the Scottish Parliament 1994
To Acts of Senedd Cymru Incomplete
To Acts of the National Assembly for Wales 1994
To Measures of the National Assembly for Wales 1994
To Church Measures 1994
To Acts of the Northern Ireland Assembly 2006
To Acts of the Old Scottish Parliament 1424-1707 1994
To Acts of the English Parliament 1267-1706 1994
To Acts of the Old Irish Parliament 1495-1800 1994
To Acts of the Parliament of Great Britain 1707-1800 1994
To Northern Ireland Orders in Council 2006
To Measures of the Northern Ireland Assembly 1974 2006
To Acts of the Northern Ireland Parliament 1921-1972 2006
To UK Statutory Instruments 1972
To Welsh Statutory Instruments 1972
To Scottish Statutory Instruments 1972
To Northern Ireland Statutory Rules Incomplete
To Church Instruments Incomplete
To UK Ministerial Orders Incomplete
To UK Statutory Rules and Orders 1972
To Northern Ireland Statutory Rules and Orders  Incomplete

EU Data Completeness

www.legislation.gov.uk carries all documents on EUR-Lex that fulfil the following criteria:

  • Documents are classified on EUR-Lex (in the “sector” classification scheme) as an EU regulation, decision or directive.
  • Documents were printed in the L series Official Journal of the European Union, i.e. have been assigned a number.
  • Documents are available in English.
  • Documents are available in PDF and/or Formex (the EUR-Lex proprietary legislation schema) XML formats.

The majority of EU legislation is available on EUR-Lex as PDF and all available PDFs meeting the inclusion criteria above have been published on www.legislation.gov.uk . 

Formex XML is generally only available on EUR-Lex for documents published from 2004 onwards. All those available have been  transformed to CLML XML and published to www.legislation.gov.uk. This means that all regular www.legislation.gov.uk formats and features derived from CLML XML will be present for recent EU legislation data as well as UK legislation data.

EU Treaties 

Four EU treaties (eut) have been published to www.legislation.gov.uk . 

  • Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union:

The most recent revised version is available as CLML XML (and all derived formats) and non-dynamic PDF. All earlier revised points-in-time are available in non-dynamic PDF format.

  • Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community
  • Treaty on European Union

The most recent revised versions are available as CLML XML (and all derived formats) and non-dynamic PDF. All earlier revised points-in-time are available in non-dynamic PDF format as are the original EU Official Journal versions.

  • Agreement on the European Economic Area

The adopted and most recent revised versions are available as CLML XML (and all derived formats) and non-dynamic PDF. All earlier revised points-in-time are available in non-dynamic PDF format as is the original EU Official Journal version.

 

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