Report on the webinar "The new website of "legislation.gov.uk": an overview" (Thursday 17 December 2020) - by Stephen Gregory

Stephen Gregory is a team leader at Welsh Government Information, Library & Archive Services, and is Honorary Secretary on the GIG Committee. Stephen has worked at the Welsh Government for 14 years and has prior experience in the legal, further and higher education and health care education library sectors.

On 17 December 2020 Matthew Bell, Head of Legislation Services at The National Archives, provided an overview of the history of the www.legislation.gov.uk website, going on to outline recent and planned developments. The webinar demonstrated how much the site has developed, how it responds to changing needs (e.g. timeliness, UK’s exit from the European Union, as well as Coronavirus legislation) and showcased some lesser known features of the website. This was a fascinating and useful overview of legislation.gov.uk and a timely reminder of the value of opportunities to look at information platforms with new eyes.

 

Legislation.gov.uk celebrated its 10^th anniversary in July 2010 and is the official home of revised and enacted UK legislation. The site was formed by combining the unamended UK legislation data from the former HMSO Online website and the amended, but not very up to date data of primary legislation, from the UK Statute Law database provided by the Department for Constitutional Affairs. Matt outlined how over recently years the TNA Team have worked hard to bring amendments to primary legislation up to date.  Currently 99.5% of in-force primary legislation is amended (i.e. where there are no outstanding amendments of more than 3 months old still waiting to be applied). Secondary legislation published since 2018 is now also being consolidated. Even if changes have not been recorded on legislation.gov.uk then they may still be easily identified by using the Changes to Legislation search options https://www.legislation.gov.uk/changes . This search service can identify changes dating back to 1971.

 

Matt provided a “behind the scenes” view of legislation.gov.uk. The public website is supported by two separate tools. Firstly a publishing (data gathering) tool where government departments lodge new legislation, in the case of secondary legislation by using a standard electronic template. And secondly a bespoke editorial tool, which enables TNA staff to record, track, sequence, schedule and publish changes to legislation. We were also shown examples of the metrics that Matt and his colleagues use. Numbers of site visits, page views, number of amendments scheduled and the number of amendments made by the team, as well as weekly views on the proportion of legislation pages accessed that are up to date, or where there are consolidation lags. There were also indications of usage surveys and user modelling, as well as clear indications of how these metrics impact on service prioritisation. Significant changes in legislation.gov.uk service usage has been seen during the coronavirus pandemic. In one week in November 2020 legislation.gov.uk received over 9 million page views with access to coronavirus legislation being a significant element of this usage. This demonstrates the centrality of legislation.gov.uk for members of the public to access key legislation.

 

In addition to providing amended versions of secondary legislation, a further significant change to the legislation.gov.uk platform is the capture of European Union legislation – the Retained EU Law collection. From EU Exit a vast body of EU-derived legislation incorporated into UK law, as well as directly applicable EU law, will be needed. Matt and his team have extracted data from EUR-Lex to provide a comprehensive collection of EU law that may be applicable to the UK, where possible providing snapshots of amended versions of EU law prior to the UK fully leaving the EU. Going forward, UK law will amend this body of retained EU law for continuing application to the UK. Legislation.gov.uk will capture and implement these amendments. With the vast number of domestic law amendments caused by EU Exit, as well the new challenges of maintaining a collection of more than 150,000 pieces of retained EU law, workload levels in the legislation.gov.uk team have increased significantly, presenting “a significant mountain to climb”.

 

As a former legal librarian this session provided me with a really helpful overview of recent changes to the legislation.gov.uk service and highlighted some gaps in my knowledge especially about the Changes to Legislation search, consolidating secondary legislation, and the new Retained EU Law provision. The session also provided evidence on the growing relevance of legislation.gov.uk to my general user population and has therefore caused a personal re-appraisal of the value of legislation.gov.uk in my work.

 

The Government Information Group is grateful to Matt Bell for this session. The webinar has been recorded and access details will be circulated to GIG members.