Editorial Update/Affected Extent Research

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Affected Extent Research 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 need to be treated as limited extent amendments.

Note: You can skip this research if the affecting extent document in the spreadsheet is marked as 'UK' or 'same as affected'.

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

Where an item of legislation has not been revised this is quite a straight forward 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  • Provisions may have been partly repealed and no longer extend as widely as before.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)). Othwerwise, 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 Use this column to record the territorial application value of an affected provision where it has been explicitly stated in the affected item of legislation. This is very rare in primary legislation, but will occur more often when we move to update specific secondary legislation.

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.
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