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Statute Law Database

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Hello everyone – my first post, well overdue.

At last I have some news in response to Nick’s email some time ago querying the status of UK online legislation. An internal pilot of the Statute Law Database has recently been completed and is being evaluated.

The database is expected to be made available to Government departments in April. A pilot of the public service will follow in May, with the service expected to go live by the end of this year. The publicly-accessible database is intended to be freely available.

However our English colleagues are a little wary of these promised deadlines. I recall the first excitement over 10 years ago when the Statute Law Database was promised by the then Conservative government. Blair has now been in power for 8 years. Things don’t move very quickly in the civil service…

I will keep an eye on developments.

Comments

  1. pengelley
    February 14th, 2006 at 2:02 pm

    Thanks Ruth. Like you I won’t get too excited yet!

  2. Simon C
    February 14th, 2006 at 3:01 pm

    Remember that Field’s revolution never reached Britain, so the standard Canadian assumptions about decennial consolidations never took hold. We tended to use Halsbury’s Statutes as if they were official.

    So there hasn’t really been the sort of consolidation mentality that would have led to as easy an embrace of a statute database, as Ontario went through with elaws.

  3. Simon Fodden
    February 14th, 2006 at 7:03 pm

    Welcome, Ruth. Overdue, perhaps; but never late.

  4. Nick Holmes
    February 24th, 2006 at 5:35 am

    This from my blog:

    Tony Hopkins, Head of the Statutory Publications Office at the DCA, reports that the SPO has successfully completed the pilot for the Statute Law Database government service enquiry system. The final evaluation is being concluded now and it will go live in April. The pilot for the public version will start in May. Judging from earlier indications, public release should not be far off the end of the year. Watch this blog and the SLD information page on the DCA site for developments.