Difference between revisions of "Editorial Update/Affected Extent Research"

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When you are making the decision to skip an Affected Extent Research task, remember that you will also need to consider the potential for co-extensivity of any affected effects and if you do decide to skip the task, you should still consider when you come to carry out the update.   
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When you are making the decision to skip an Affected Extent Research task, remember that you will also need to consider the [[Editorial_Update/Affected_Extent_Research#tna-Affectedeffectsextentpotential|for co-extensivity of any affected effects]] and if you do decide to skip the task, you should still consider when you come to carry out the update.   
  
 
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Revision as of 06:54, 12 September 2025

Overview

Affected Extent Research (AER) needs to be done before an item of legislation can be updated online. The main aim of the research is to establish whether any of the amendments have a narrower extent than that of the affected provision and therefore whether they may need to be treated as limited extent amendments.


Skipping the Affected Extent Research Task

WARNING: Whilst it is possible to skip this task where the affecting extent of the amendments in the TOES spreadsheet are all marked as 'UK' or 'Same as affected' and therefore there is no likelihood of limited extent amendments, it is very important to carry out Affected Extent Research and not skip the task where there are likely to be limited extent amendments (in other words, where there are affecting extents which are narrower than UK, to make sure that you will see the limited extent warnings whilst editing. If you think that carrying out the AER will cause delay, it’s a good idea to email your reviewer or line manager to ask them to expedite the AER review for you.

When you are making the decision to skip an Affected Extent Research task, remember that you will also need to consider the for co-extensivity of any affected effects and if you do decide to skip the task, you should still consider when you come to carry out the update.

Affect Extent Affected Effects Extent Affected Territorial Application Amendment Type Affecting Extent Affecting Territorial Application Skip? Notes
S any any YES e.g. SSIs, asps

The Affected Extent Research task

Affected Extent Research involves researching the extent and territorial application of the affected provisions that are contained in the affected legislation. It may also involve investigating the extent and territorial application of the affecting provisions contained in each affecting item of legislation.

Where an item of legislation has not been revised this is quite a straightforward task. You just need to identify the item of legislation’s extent provisions and follow their instructions.

However, where an item of legislation has been revised, the applied amendments may have changed where the provisions now extend to (or where they now apply):

  • New provisions may have been inserted or substituted with wider or narrower extents than the original provisions.
  • Provisions may have been partly repealed and no longer extend as widely as before.
  • Non-textual amendments may have 'extended' the existing provisions to new geographical extents.
  • The original extent provisions may themselves have been altered thus affecting the extent of a portion of or indeed the whole item of legislation.

It is not enough to identify the extent of the whole provision. You must look at the precise extent of the sub-provision which actually contains the effect. Be as “granular” as possible. Reach down to the precise extent of the lowest sub-provision that is actually affected.

So, when doing the Affected Extent Research task you must provide the extent/territorial application for affected provisions of the latest version of the item of legislation, down to their lowest numbered affected provision level. The easiest way to find this out is to look at the latest version of the item of legislation on legislation.gov.uk or, if you have access to it, on ActiveText. You need to download the Affected Extent spreadsheet from the online system, fill in the relevant extent and territorial application values and then upload the completed spreadsheet.

When you download the Affected Extent spreadsheet there are three columns you need to fill in:

  1. Affected Extent Use this column to record the extent value of the provision itself (some people refer to it as the 'Affected Provision Extent column'). Use the dropdown menu in each cell to select the appropriate extent value.
  2. Affected Effects Extent Use this column to enter the extent value for any effects that an affected provision may contain. For example, a provision may extend to EWS (the Affected Extent value), but it may contain amendments to other legislation which are said to extend only to EW or to have the same extent as the provisions they amend (i.e. 'Same as affected'). This is its Affected Effects Extent value. You only need to enter this value if the Affected Effects Extent is different from the Affected Provision Extent. You don’t need to check that the affected provision actually contains amendments. Sometimes the extent provisions of the item of legislation will explicitly state that the amendments contained in specified provisions have a different extent from the provisions containing them. You can then enter this value against the specific affected provision(s)). Otherwise, they will make a general statement to the effect that all amendments and repeals made by the item of legislation (or a part of the item of legislation) have the same extent as the provisions they amend or repeal. You can then enter “Same as affected” against all affected provisions or all affected provisions contained in the relevant part).
  3. Affected Territorial Application (TA) Use this column to record the territorial application value of an affected provision. In secondary legislation this may be stated explicitly in an extent/TA provision or it may be provided for in an Explanatory Memorandum (EM). The TA is rarely explicitly stated in the extent provisions of primary legislation, but it may be indicated by the Part, Chapter or section headings which subsume the affected provision. For example, 1989 c. 42, Pt. 1 is said to extend to EWS, but if you look at the section headings of ss. 3, 3A, 3B, 13, 14, these all indicate that these provisions in fact have a narrower application: "Scotland and Wales" and "England" for ss. 3-3B, "England and Wales" and "Scotland" for ss. 13, 14. Another example, is 2016 c. 22, Pt. 6, which extends to EW, but which clearly only applies to E, since its heading is "Planning in England". An example of limited TA being explicitly referred to in primary legislation is 2014 c. 2, s. 40(6)).
WARNING: Although now we record the affecting extent = EW and affecting TA = W for affecting Welsh legislation as a matter of course, in the past we used only to record affecting TA where it was explicitly stated in the legislation. Therefore you may need to correct the affecting TA for older affecting Welsh documents when you perform the Affected Extent Research task prior to starting update.

Step by Step Guide to completing Affected Extent Research

  1. Select the Affected Extent Research task by clicking on it in My Current Work.
  2. Click on the Start Task button in the task landing page. This will take you to stage 1 of the task: Download Effects Spreadsheet.
  3. Click on the Download file button to download a spreadsheet containing the affected provisions for the item of legislation you are updating.
  4. Save the spreadsheet to My Documents on the C: drive of your computer.
  5. Investigate and input the Affected Extent, Affected Effects Extent (if any) and Affected Territorial Application (if any) for each affected provision. The easiest way to find this out is to look at the latest version of the item of legislation on legislation.gov.uk or, if you have access to it, on ActiveText:
    • Check the extent provisions of the item of legislation. Remember there may be more than one of these. In primary legislation there is normally a main extent provision at the end of the Act. But there may also be one at the beginning or end of the Part or Chapter that contains the affecting provision, or even one in the provision itself. Also, bear in mind that the extent provisions themselves may have been amended. In secondary legislation the extent provision (if there is one) will normally be at the beginning of the item of legislation. If extent is not specified within the item of secondary legislation, you will need to research the extent of the power-conferring provisions of the enabling Act.
    • If you have access, you may find it useful to look at the marked up hard copy legislation or the scanned version of that mark up.
    • If you have access, you may find it useful to View Attributes in ActiveText. But remember that when we set the attributes of an item of legislation during Initial Edit we work at whole provision level. We therefore set the extent to the widest extent of that provision’s sub-provisions. We cannot therefore rely on these attributes to find out the extent of a particular sub-provision, which may be narrower than that of the whole provision.
    • If the above two options aren’t available, you will have to rely on the item of legislation as it appears in legislation.gov.uk. The same caveat applies here as above.
    • Open the item of legislation completely in legislation.gov.uk and tick the box marked Show Geographical Extent in the Advanced Features area on the left of the screen.
    • For each affected provision, check that the original extent value has not been altered by subsequent textual amendments with wider or narrower extent.
    • For each affected provision, check that the original extent value has not been altered by subsequent non-textual amendments which extend that provision to wider extents.
  6. Make sure you save your changes to the completed spreadsheet.
  7. Click Next stage to go through to stage 2: Upload Effects Spreadsheet.
  8. Click on the Browse button and select your saved spreadsheet and click Open.
  9. Click on the Upload button to upload your spreadsheet to the online system ready for review.
  10. Once the affected extent review has been carried out, you will be able to start the update task.

Blank spreadsheets

The spreadsheet that you download as part of the AER task may be blank if all the effects have already been partially applied in an earlier PiT and the update task is now dealing only with further commencements or if the update task consists only of coming into force effects which were applied during initial edit. Where this is the case you may skip the AER task and continue to update.

However, to double check that the spreadsheet legitimately blank for the above reasons and not because it is missing effects which have been recorded in TOES, please download and check the TOES for your update document using the following URL (replacing <type>, <year> and <number> with the details for your document - you can easily copy these from the URL for the document on the website):

https://editorial.legislation.gov.uk/changes/affected/<type>/<year>/<number>/data.xls?extended=full-with-co&sort=affecting-year-number

For example, to check the TOES for affected document UK PGA 2008 c. 11, you would use the following:

https://editorial.legislation.gov.uk/changes/affected/ukpga/2008/11/data.xls?extended=full-with-co&sort=affecting-year-number

If you find that unapplied effects which do need to be applied as part of your update task are missing from the AER spreadsheet, then please speak to a Review Editor. The update task may need to be reset and the update tasks deleted and re-allocated to allow the AER data to be refreshed.

Related Pages

Editorial Principles - Extent and Territorial Application

Limited Extent Amendments (including Concurrent Version Guidance)

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