Preparation Tasks/Record Effects/Commencement Orders
Introduction to Commencement Order tasks
When doing the record effects task on a Commencement Order (CO) (or effects research, which is essentially the same task but on already partially researched affecting documents) our goal is accurately to translate the drafter’s commencement provisions from a set of written, narrative instructions telling us how the commenced Act is being brought into force into a set of simple “coming into force” effects for each commenced provision or sub-provision. These effects will form the basis of our I-note information. At the same time – and given that the drafter quite often relies on rather vague formulations (e.g. commencing a provision “in so far as not already in force”) in order to save themselves the effort of precision – we also want to avoid creating unnecessary points in time for online update, so we can’t just slavishly follow what the drafter has said. Therefore we need to be aware of how far the Act has already been brought into force prior to the CO we're dealing with (and therefore ignore provisions which have been wholly commenced already) and we need to research what the extent of our commenced provision is so we know whether or not it is now finally wholly in force as a result of our CO.
The completed and reviewed research done in the record effects task will then form the basis of a separate task for the same affecting document called “Commencing Effects Research”. This task will take a different perspective on what the CO is doing and allow us to investigate whether or not the knock on effects contained in the commenced Act have also been brought into force as a result of this CO. This research is the basis of the commencement part of our F-note and C-note information.
All this research is the kind of work we used to do at the update stage. The Expert Participation Project (EPP) aims to simplify update so that external people can perform the more mechanical update functions and help us get up to date quicker. This means we've had to move the more intensive and complex research work to an earlier stage in our editorial processes and so it has become part of the record effects (and effects research) task.