How to trace legislation
Help from HSE
If you want to know which legislation relates to your industry, there are a few ways to find this out:
- Some of our industry and topic sites have a specific legislation section and we hope to introduce this as a standard feature across all sites
- The lists of Acts and Statutory Instruments can be sorted alphabetically by title and can be used to identify relevant legislation
- The search engine can also be used to trace legal information
If you are also interested in the general legislation that applies to all working environments you may want to:
- visit the Getting started site which provides basic information
- explore the Workers site which explains the range of rights and responsibilities that affect employees
- check out the Businesses site which describes legal responsibilities of companies and the benefits that good health and safety practices can bring.
Amendments to existing regulations are also subject to a consultation process. You can find out about them from the sources above and from the current consultations and discussions area.
External sources
There are many sources, both free and priced that will enable you to trace Acts and regulations. The following selection may prove useful:
- legislation.gov.uk provides access to UK legislation online. Full texts of Acts of Parliament from 1988 and Statutory Instruments (SIs) from 1987 are available on the site as well as draft SIs and legislation for Northern Ireland. The website is now in the process of uploading a large number of SIs from 1948 onwards where this legislation is still in force.
- The UK Parliament website includes information on Bills and SIs going through Parliament. The House of Commons Information Office has also produced two Factsheets (now archived) that provide detailed information on the UK legal system: