Difference between revisions of "Research Tasks/Secondary Effects Research"
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| − | <li>Search for the affecting document on the editorial system under the category “Research tasks” (the green tasks) and allocate the document to yourself by using the dropdown menu to add your name in the Assign box next to the " | + | <li>Search for the affecting document on the editorial system under the category “Research tasks” (the green tasks) and allocate the document to yourself by using the dropdown menu to add your name in the Assign box next to the "Research Secondary Effects” task (or “Review Secondary Effects Research” task if you are the reviewer). Click Confirm.</li> |
<li>Select the task from your dashboard and click on <strong>Start Task</strong> on the next screen.</li> | <li>Select the task from your dashboard and click on <strong>Start Task</strong> on the next screen.</li> | ||
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</li> | </li> | ||
<li><strong>Open the affecting document on legislation.gov.uk</strong> so that you can use it to check the secondary effects data. You may find it helpful to arrange your screen so that you can see the affecting document and the spreadsheet at the same time, and hide any columns in the spreadsheet that you don't need (such as the Affected Extent, Affected Effects Extent, Affected Territorial Application, Notes, Amendment applied to Database, Suggested Commentary and Appended Commentary): | <li><strong>Open the affecting document on legislation.gov.uk</strong> so that you can use it to check the secondary effects data. You may find it helpful to arrange your screen so that you can see the affecting document and the spreadsheet at the same time, and hide any columns in the spreadsheet that you don't need (such as the Affected Extent, Affected Effects Extent, Affected Territorial Application, Notes, Amendment applied to Database, Suggested Commentary and Appended Commentary): | ||
| + | |||
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<li>Ensure each effect is <strong>“granularised”</strong> to the appropriate affected and/or affecting sub-provision level that we would expect for newly recorded effects. You may need to insert rows in order to: | <li>Ensure each effect is <strong>“granularised”</strong> to the appropriate affected and/or affecting sub-provision level that we would expect for newly recorded effects. You may need to insert rows in order to: | ||
| − | |||
(a) split out effects against <strong>several affected sub-provisions</strong> which have been bundled together under one affected whole provision, or | (a) split out effects against <strong>several affected sub-provisions</strong> which have been bundled together under one affected whole provision, or | ||
| − | |||
(b) split out multiple effects to one affected provision by <strong>several affecting sub-provisions</strong>. | (b) split out multiple effects to one affected provision by <strong>several affecting sub-provisions</strong>. | ||
| + | (NB When inserting new rows, be careful not to copy down the existing <strong>key ids</strong> in Column A as a duplicated key id will prevent the spreadsheet from uploading later. There is some validation in the spreadsheet to warn you of duplicated ids in column A by showing them in red font).</li> | ||
| − | + | <li><strong>Add or correct the type of effect, extent, territorial application, commencement provision, IF Date, IF Date Qualification, etc</strong>, as appropriate for each effect in accordance with our usual [[Preparation_Tasks/Record_Effects|Extended TOES practice]]. <strong>Beware the phrasing of extents in older documents.</strong> For example, [https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1995/1442/regulation/1/made S.I. 1995/1442, reg. 1] states that "These Regulations extend to Northern Ireland" in order to indicate that it extends to N.I. <i>as well as</i> to Great Britain and therefore extends to the whole of the UK. See the [http://community.legislation.gov.uk/mediawiki/index.php?title=Editorial_Principles#Secondary_Legislation:_Extent_and_TA extent guidance] in Editorial Principles for further help.</li> | |
| − | |||
| − | <li><strong>Add or correct | ||
<li>Check for <strong>obvious savings/transitional provisions</strong> to add to the Savs column as appropriate. Sometimes the BV effects include Savs as part of the affecting provision field or mention them in the type of effect field.</li> | <li>Check for <strong>obvious savings/transitional provisions</strong> to add to the Savs column as appropriate. Sometimes the BV effects include Savs as part of the affecting provision field or mention them in the type of effect field.</li> | ||
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<li>Delete any Comments for Editor added during the BV data extraction process where these are now no longer needed.</li> | <li>Delete any Comments for Editor added during the BV data extraction process where these are now no longer needed.</li> | ||
| − | <li>If any effects are marked with a Y in the "Applied to database" column, check on legislation.gov.uk to see that whether or not the effects have actually been applied. This situation may occur in particular in relation to DWP legislation, some of whose effects were added to TOES before the general bulk upload of secondary effects. If the effect has been applied, leave the Y intact; if not, please remove the Y. (NB You should check at the appropriate PiT for the effect, as it may have been overwritten by later amendments). | + | <li>If any effects are marked with a <strong>Y in the "Applied to database" column</strong>, check on legislation.gov.uk to see that whether or not the effects have actually been applied. This situation may occur in particular in relation to DWP legislation, some of whose effects were added to TOES before the general bulk upload of secondary effects. If the effect has been applied, leave the Y intact; if not, please remove the Y. (NB You should check at the appropriate PiT for the effect, as it may have been overwritten by later amendments). |
| + | |||
| + | <li>Where some or all of your <strong>effects (as made) are prospective</strong> and require a commencement order to bring them into force, you should look on legislation.gov.uk to find out if they were ever commenced. If they were commenced, add the details of the later commencement order (legislation number, commencing provision and any savings/transitional provisions) in the Appended Commentary field (e.g. "S.I. 2000/1, art. 2 (with art. 3)") and add the in force date and in force date qualification in the IF Date and IFDQ fields. If they were not brought into force, mark them as "prosp" in the IF Date field and investigate if the affecting provision has since been revoked and, if so, mark it with an N and Note.<li/> | ||
<li><strong>NB You do not need to change any effects hitting primary legislation</strong>. In fact, you can delete all the primary effects from the spreadsheet as these get discarded on upload of the review task in any case.</li> | <li><strong>NB You do not need to change any effects hitting primary legislation</strong>. In fact, you can delete all the primary effects from the spreadsheet as these get discarded on upload of the review task in any case.</li> | ||
| + | |||
| + | <li><strong>DO NOT remove coming into force effects</strong> added during initial edit.</li> | ||
<li>When you have completed the secondary effects research task, save your changes and click on the <strong>Next Stage</strong> button.</li> | <li>When you have completed the secondary effects research task, save your changes and click on the <strong>Next Stage</strong> button.</li> | ||
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==Issues== | ==Issues== | ||
| − | Be careful with older affecting documents, we've noticed that sometimes the | + | ===Drafters footnote references incorrectly transcribed into xml in older affecting documents=== |
| + | |||
| + | Be careful with older affecting documents, in particular those from before 1988: we've noticed that sometimes the drafters footnote references have been transcribed incorrectly in the xml as part of the text rather than as a hyperlinked footnote reference. For example, see S.I. 1987/1508, reg. 4: | ||
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1987/1508/regulation/4/made | https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1987/1508/regulation/4/made | ||
| Line 93: | Line 97: | ||
"In paragraph (2) of regulation 3(a) ..." | "In paragraph (2) of regulation 3(a) ..." | ||
| − | But in fact the reference to "(a)" after "regulation 3" should | + | But in fact the reference to "(a)" after "regulation 3" should be a hyperlinked footnote reference to footnote (a): "(a) Regulation 3(2) was amended by S.I. 1984/697, 1985/46 and 1986/427." |
See the KPV version here: | See the KPV version here: | ||
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1987/1508/pdfs/uksi_19871508_en.pdf | https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1987/1508/pdfs/uksi_19871508_en.pdf | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===Documents already online initial edited may only contain coming into force effects against themselves=== | ||
| + | |||
| + | Where, before we compiled the list of secondary effects research tasks needing to be done, your document was already online initial edited and where that document comes into force wholly or in part on a fixed future date over month after its made date, it will contain unapplied coming into force effects against itself. You should leave these effects alone. They will be applied during update to add start dates to the affected provisions, at which point they will also be marked with a Y. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===No effects in review spreadsheet, but there should be secondary effects present=== | ||
| + | |||
| + | Where PLC have uploaded a blank spreadsheet, but there should in fact be secondary effects to review, I have found the easiest way to rectify this is as follows: | ||
| + | |||
| + | Use the Help and Support tab in the review task to return the task to the editor. Then allocate the secondary effects task to yourself. This will allow you to download the skeleton secondary effects from the TOES database by clicking the "Download System Effects Spreadsheet" button. You can then add the additional details as usual, upload the spreadsheet and review it. | ||
| + | |||
| + | To see if secondary effects should be present in the spreadsheet, use this url to view the content of the TOES database: | ||
| + | |||
| + | https://editorial.legislation.gov.uk/changes/affecting/[type]/[year]/[number]/data.xls?extended=full-with-co&sort=affecting-year-number | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===Workaround if there is no Appended Commentary column available in an older uploaded spreadsheet=== | ||
| + | |||
| + | Some of the older spreadsheets have different formatting and are missing the "Appended Commentary" column. If you are reviewing such a sheet and need to add an appended commentary (for example, where you need to cite a commencement order for a commencement conditional upon another provision coming into force), then you can work around this by changing the column heading of the Suggested Commentary column to Appended Commentary and using that column (e.g. to add "S.I. 2010/2089, art. 2(a)"). I did this in the secondary effects research task for S.I. 2010/2262 (which comes into force on the commencement of section 137(2)(b)(i) of the Legal Services Act 2007) and you can see in the link below that it results in the correct TOES being added to the database: | ||
| + | |||
| + | https://editorial.legislation.gov.uk/changes/affecting/uksi/2010/2262/data.xls?extended=full-with-co&sort=affecting-year-number | ||
==Related Pages== | ==Related Pages== | ||
Latest revision as of 12:42, 9 May 2025
Background and Object of Secondary Effects Research
Background
From the beginning of 2012 onwards we have simultaneously captured effects against both primary and secondary legislation for each newly published affecting document using the Identify Effects and Record Effects preparation tasks (the blue tasks) on the editorial system.
Before 2012, since we were not at that stage updating secondary legislation, we did not hold any secondary effects data in our TOES database. In order to allow us to start updating secondary legislation we had to extract this effects data from the SI Bound Volumes (BVs) by scanning their tables of secondary effects, digitising this data and uploading it to our TOES database. We currently have secondary effects data on UK SIs going back to 1973. Secondary effects data for NI SRs however currently only goes back to 2007, but work is in the pipeline to add more NI secondary effects soon.
Since the BVs are a print publication, hampered by considerations of space, the extracted secondary effects are in a very abbreviated “skeleton” format; they are not “granularised” down to the appropriate affected or affecting sub-provision level that we require; and they do not contain the extended TOES details (i.e. type of effect, extent, start date, savings, etc) that we need to “drive” our update tasks.
Object
The object of secondary effects research, therefore, is to take these rudimentary, “skeleton” effects and transform them into our usual record effects “house style” so that we can use them to update secondary legislation.
As such, secondary effects research is almost identical to the record effects and record effects review tasks and the Record Effects Wiki guidance applies to it. However, bear in mind that in most cases there will be no scanned marked up documents in the task to refer to (we only uploaded our scanned handwritten mark up for UK SIs made between 2002 and 2011) and we do not require you to create marked up pdfs. You will be checking the effects against the legislation on legislation.gov.uk.
A group of volunteers from the Practical Law Company (PLC) completed most of the secondary effects research tasks for the 2003-2011 affecting documents a few years ago, but the majority of these tasks are still awaiting review. For documents affecting secondary prior to 2003 both the original secondary effects research task and also review will need to be done.
Carrying out the Secondary Effects Research Task
- Search for the affecting document on the editorial system under the category “Research tasks” (the green tasks) and allocate the document to yourself by using the dropdown menu to add your name in the Assign box next to the "Research Secondary Effects” task (or “Review Secondary Effects Research” task if you are the reviewer). Click Confirm.
- Select the task from your dashboard and click on Start Task on the next screen.
- Download the System Effects Spreadsheet, open it in Excel and save it to your PC under an appropriate filename.
(NB you can ignore the “Download Bound Volume Effects Spreadsheet” button, which is now obsolete. The “Download Stashed Effects Spreadsheet” will only be present if the task has been done by an editor and then returned to them by a reviewer).
- Open the affecting document on legislation.gov.uk so that you can use it to check the secondary effects data. You may find it helpful to arrange your screen so that you can see the affecting document and the spreadsheet at the same time, and hide any columns in the spreadsheet that you don't need (such as the Affected Extent, Affected Effects Extent, Affected Territorial Application, Notes, Amendment applied to Database, Suggested Commentary and Appended Commentary):
- Check each effect to make sure that it is recorded against the correct affected legislation.
- Ensure each effect is “granularised” to the appropriate affected and/or affecting sub-provision level that we would expect for newly recorded effects. You may need to insert rows in order to: (a) split out effects against several affected sub-provisions which have been bundled together under one affected whole provision, or (b) split out multiple effects to one affected provision by several affecting sub-provisions. (NB When inserting new rows, be careful not to copy down the existing key ids in Column A as a duplicated key id will prevent the spreadsheet from uploading later. There is some validation in the spreadsheet to warn you of duplicated ids in column A by showing them in red font).
- Add or correct the type of effect, extent, territorial application, commencement provision, IF Date, IF Date Qualification, etc, as appropriate for each effect in accordance with our usual Extended TOES practice. Beware the phrasing of extents in older documents. For example, S.I. 1995/1442, reg. 1 states that "These Regulations extend to Northern Ireland" in order to indicate that it extends to N.I. as well as to Great Britain and therefore extends to the whole of the UK. See the extent guidance in Editorial Principles for further help.
- Check for obvious savings/transitional provisions to add to the Savs column as appropriate. Sometimes the BV effects include Savs as part of the affecting provision field or mention them in the type of effect field.
- Do a brief check for missing effects, but do not spend hours poring over the document.
- Delete any Comments for Editor added during the BV data extraction process where these are now no longer needed.
- If any effects are marked with a Y in the "Applied to database" column, check on legislation.gov.uk to see that whether or not the effects have actually been applied. This situation may occur in particular in relation to DWP legislation, some of whose effects were added to TOES before the general bulk upload of secondary effects. If the effect has been applied, leave the Y intact; if not, please remove the Y. (NB You should check at the appropriate PiT for the effect, as it may have been overwritten by later amendments).
- Where some or all of your effects (as made) are prospective and require a commencement order to bring them into force, you should look on legislation.gov.uk to find out if they were ever commenced. If they were commenced, add the details of the later commencement order (legislation number, commencing provision and any savings/transitional provisions) in the Appended Commentary field (e.g. "S.I. 2000/1, art. 2 (with art. 3)") and add the in force date and in force date qualification in the IF Date and IFDQ fields. If they were not brought into force, mark them as "prosp" in the IF Date field and investigate if the affecting provision has since been revoked and, if so, mark it with an N and Note.
- NB You do not need to change any effects hitting primary legislation. In fact, you can delete all the primary effects from the spreadsheet as these get discarded on upload of the review task in any case.
- DO NOT remove coming into force effects added during initial edit.
- When you have completed the secondary effects research task, save your changes and click on the Next Stage button.
- Upload your spreadsheet by browsing for it on your PC, selecting the file and then clicking the Upload button.
Example: S.S.I. 1999/64
Here’s The National Health Service (Optical Charges and Payments) (Scotland) Amendment (No.2) Regulations 1999 (S.S.I. 1999/64):
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ssi/1999/64/contents/made
Downloaded System Effects
Uploaded researched secondary effects
The changes to the downloaded data are shown in red.
Issues
Drafters footnote references incorrectly transcribed into xml in older affecting documents
Be careful with older affecting documents, in particular those from before 1988: we've noticed that sometimes the drafters footnote references have been transcribed incorrectly in the xml as part of the text rather than as a hyperlinked footnote reference. For example, see S.I. 1987/1508, reg. 4:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1987/1508/regulation/4/made
The text in the xml version reads:
"In paragraph (2) of regulation 3(a) ..."
But in fact the reference to "(a)" after "regulation 3" should be a hyperlinked footnote reference to footnote (a): "(a) Regulation 3(2) was amended by S.I. 1984/697, 1985/46 and 1986/427."
See the KPV version here:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1987/1508/pdfs/uksi_19871508_en.pdf
Documents already online initial edited may only contain coming into force effects against themselves
Where, before we compiled the list of secondary effects research tasks needing to be done, your document was already online initial edited and where that document comes into force wholly or in part on a fixed future date over month after its made date, it will contain unapplied coming into force effects against itself. You should leave these effects alone. They will be applied during update to add start dates to the affected provisions, at which point they will also be marked with a Y.
No effects in review spreadsheet, but there should be secondary effects present
Where PLC have uploaded a blank spreadsheet, but there should in fact be secondary effects to review, I have found the easiest way to rectify this is as follows:
Use the Help and Support tab in the review task to return the task to the editor. Then allocate the secondary effects task to yourself. This will allow you to download the skeleton secondary effects from the TOES database by clicking the "Download System Effects Spreadsheet" button. You can then add the additional details as usual, upload the spreadsheet and review it.
To see if secondary effects should be present in the spreadsheet, use this url to view the content of the TOES database:
https://editorial.legislation.gov.uk/changes/affecting/[type]/[year]/[number]/data.xls?extended=full-with-co&sort=affecting-year-number
Workaround if there is no Appended Commentary column available in an older uploaded spreadsheet
Some of the older spreadsheets have different formatting and are missing the "Appended Commentary" column. If you are reviewing such a sheet and need to add an appended commentary (for example, where you need to cite a commencement order for a commencement conditional upon another provision coming into force), then you can work around this by changing the column heading of the Suggested Commentary column to Appended Commentary and using that column (e.g. to add "S.I. 2010/2089, art. 2(a)"). I did this in the secondary effects research task for S.I. 2010/2262 (which comes into force on the commencement of section 137(2)(b)(i) of the Legal Services Act 2007) and you can see in the link below that it results in the correct TOES being added to the database: