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Acts of Parliament, Parliamentary Bills and Statutory Instruments

A-Z How to Find Information >  Law and Your Rights

Public General Acts

  • Head of a statue of 'Justice'The main type of UK Acts, the Public General Acts, are available at the Legislation.gov.uk.
  • Two versions of Acts are available, original versions (as enacted) and revised versions.
  • The revised versions have changes made by legislation enacted before 2002 incorporated into them. Many, but not all, later changes have also been incorporated
  • If an Act has not been completely updated with later changes, you will see a 'Changes to legislation' warning at the top of the text of the Act. The warning will link you to a page that lets you search for updates
  • For details of the web site's content and for more details on finding how up-to-date any Act is, click 'Frequently Asked Questions' at the the Legislation.gov.uk home page

Local and Personal Acts

  • Local and Personal Acts, also known as Private Acts, are available in original text only, not in revised text, apart from a very few exceptions, as noted below
  • Local Acts (but not Personal Acts) from 1991 are available at Legislation.gov.uk. They are unrevised, except for a small number which, for historic reasons, are revised
  • The site has a partial set from 1857-1990 and a complete set from 1991 to the present

Parliamentary Bills

  • Links to Bills before Parliament, draft Bills and Bills from previous Parliamentary sessions are at the Bills and Legislation page of the United Kingdom Parliament web site


Page last updated: 4th March 2014