About OpenLegislation

OpenLegislation is a fast, readable copy of the UK statute book. It is built from the open data The National Archives publishes at legislation.gov.uk, which remains the official version.

What it adds

• Plain addresses: /equality-act-2010/section-13. legislation.gov.uk paths still work: change the domain on any link and it redirects to the right page.
• An honest status on every page: whether the text has been revised, to what date, and which changes made by later legislation have not yet been written in.
• The text as it applies in one country: add /wales, /scotland, /england or /northern-ireland to an item's address.
• Search across titles and the full text, and citations: type 2010 c. 15 or S.I. 2019/1520 to go straight there.
• Every item and provision as JSON and Markdown: add .json or .md to its address.

The data

Every type of legislation legislation.gov.uk publishes is held, 280,266 Acts and instruments in all: UK Acts back to the thirteenth century, local and private Acts, the Acts and instruments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Church Measures, UK statutory instruments and the older statutory rules and orders, draft instruments, and retained EU law. Where legislation.gov.uk has only a scan of the printed copy, the page shows that PDF. Primary legislation and retained EU law are revised: amendments made by later legislation are written into the text, by legislation.gov.uk's editors. Statutory instruments are shown as made, as legislation.gov.uk does not revise them. A draft instrument is marked as one, and left out of search unless you choose its type. There is a backlog of changes not yet written in, and every page where that applies says so.

Licence

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Some EU-derived content is reused under Commission Decision 2011/833/EU.