FreeLegalWeb

OPSI is some way down the road in developing a new Single Legislation Service (SLS) which will combine legislation from the OPSI website and the SLD. As I understand it the SLS will effectively combine and integrate the following legislation data resources:

• the “as enacted” versions of legislation from OPSI, immediately on enactment
• the revised versions of legislation from the SLD, as and when available, complete with all versioning and annotation information
• the tables of effects data maintained by the SLD which will link past legislative provisions to relevant amending provisions
• the explanatory notes, integrated with the relevant legislative provisions

Key to the utility of the service and opening up the information has been the development of a permanent URI scheme for addressing legislation, legislation fragments, versions and related resources on the new site. Say Goodbye to link rot and Hello to an intuitive format with which any external individual or website can reliably construct an address to any legislative resource. This is not just a technical nicety, but a fundamental improvement that will open up UK legislation for public consumption.

The API is now documented on the site www.legislation.gov.uk.