Website reviews

Review of the Office of Public Sector Information website

The Journal, February 2008, page 44

OPSI
www.opsi.gov.uk

OPSI? That’s the Office of Public Sector Information to you. Although this doesn’t sound very impressive, trust me it’s one of the most useful sites on the legal web. It used to be known as www.hmso.gov.uk, which may ring a few bells – basically this is where you go to find legislation. Except, it’s now new and improved.

The site gives full and free access to all UK Public General Acts since 1988, plus a large collection from 1987 back to 1837. The thousands of regulations and orders produced every year are also reproduced, again from 1988. Explanatory memoranda are included for SIs from 2004.

As far as Holyrood is concerned, the site has basically everything, legislatively speaking. All the Acts of the Scottish Parliament are here, together with their explanatory notes, and all SSIs with (as of July 2005) their executive notes. If you need it, devolved Welsh and Northern Irish legislation is here too.

Printing from the site for use in court or similar used to be fairly untidy. However, the legislation is now also available in PDF. This has two main advantages. First, you can print off a nice, neat copy to hand to any sheriff or tribunal convener. Secondly, you can download a copy to keep or email.

Post-1987 legislation is still available in HTML as well, which is great for browsing, particularly larger items, thanks to the judicious use of hyperlinks. So, if on reading the “contents” of an Act, you decide you want s 63, just click on the section heading and you’re there.

The site is well organised, with SIs arranged by number, and Acts in alphabetical order within each year. There is also a genuinely useful advanced search facility – which given the number of potential pieces of legislation is remarkably good at finding the bit you’re looking for.

If you’re a regular visitor, you’ll be familiar with much of this, but there are now even more features.

For example, when you click on “Legislation” you are offered four options: New Legislation; Original; Revised; and Chronological Tables.

New Legislation tells you what has been added to the site over the last three days. That may seem to imply a need to check the site every other day. However, this service is also offered as an “Atom” news feed – if you have an RSS news reader downloaded on your computer, you can add these updates to it, so you have a near constant stream of brand new legislation being brought to your attention without even having to visit the site. Choose UK or Scottish Parliament, and Acts or SIs (or just click and drag “all legislation” to your news reader).

The “Original” heading is the content I described earlier, presenting the legislation in its original form. What if the Act you want has been amended? Clearly, the “Revised” section is for you. Here, OPSI has taken large chunks of content straight from the UK Statute Law Database (www.statutelaw.gov.uk). At the moment, only legislation prior to 1988 is included, updated at monthly intervals with amendments made by the Statute Law Database. The presentation is better than on the database site, but it shares some of the difficulties, most notably that it is not up-to-date. So, for example, the Education (Scotland) Act 1980 has some amendments but comes with a caveat that further amendments made in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 have not yet been reflected in the text! Obviously, therefore, this needs to be used carefully, but it is tremendously useful for older legislation which has not been recently amended. For the antiquarians among you, this includes Acts of Parliament right back to 1707, Acts of the old Scottish Parliament back to the Royal Mines Act 1424 and Acts of the old English Parliament right back to 1267, including the Magna Carta of 1297.

The chronological tables are simply a list of local Acts and private and (latterly) personal Acts.

Much of the rest of the site is taken up with aspects of public sector information and policies, mostly not particularly useful or interesting to the average Scottish solicitor. Command papers since 2001 are listed, numerically and alphabetically, but to download (or purchase) these, you have to visit the Stationery Office’s documents website (www.official-documents.gov.uk).

As with any website worth its salt these days, there is even a discussion forum. The disclaimer “discussions on this forum should not be classed as legal advice. There is no legal expertise at OPSI to answer legal questions”, seems to have been wholly disregarded as topic headings include: “My ex-employer has not paid me my holiday pay! What can I do?” and “Boundary wall? End terrace!”

Already one of my favourite websites, these changes have served to cement that position.

WHO WRITES THIS COLUMN?

The website review column is written by Iain A Nisbet of Govan Law Centre

e: iain@absolvitor.com All of these links and hundreds more can be found at www.absolvitor.com, which has recently been overhauled.

All firms in Scotland are invited to check that their current listings in the law firms directory are accurate.