On Mon, 4 Jan 2010, Denis McMahon wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:
On Fri, 1 Jan 2010, Denis McMahon wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

I think there are separate numbering sequences for general public acts
and local acts, with the former having arabic numerals and the latter
lowercase roman. The British Transport Commission Act is a local act, but
you've looked for public acts.

I specified all legislation, and the search won't accept roman numerals.

And if the act was in the database, that would have found it, since the
site does correctly find roman-numbered acts from arabic-numbered queries.
I was just trying to explain why there was a number 29 law that wasn't the
one we're looking for.

Indeed, I now have a response from opsi:

"The Act in question is a local Act and therefore is not readily available in
electronic format.

[deleted text]

The OPSI website contains a list of Major Collections of Local Legislation in
the United Kingdom. Please use the following link and scroll down to about
the middle of the page.

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/chron-tables/...-to-local-acts

Many of these will also hold general legislation."

I got a closely related reply. Here's more of its text:

The Act in question is a local Act and therefore is not readily available
in electronic format. Although the Statute Law Database does hold Local
Acts enacted after 1991, these are not revised. There are a very small
selection of Pre-1991 Local Acts that are revised by the SLD Editorial
team, but the criteria for doing this is lost in the mists of time! They
were inherited from the text of Statutes in Force, but there is nothing
in the guide to the edition which explains why they were included.

The good news is that we are planning to launch a new website later this
year which merges the functionality of OPSI and SLD websites
and it is our intention to include pre-1991 Local Acts, but they will
only be available in their original form i.e. they won't be revised.

So basically, local acts are very much second-class citizens, and will
remain so. When local acts are things like the Ormskirk and Wrabness Ferry
Slipway Act 1972, fair enough. But this act is actually a pretty major
piece of legislation, more important in its concrete impact than most
general public acts, i'd guess (it's the basis for the BTP, for instance),
and it seems a bit of an omission not to have it, or to have any intention
of providing it in amended form. Still, the OPSI/SLD teams have a big job
and a small budget, so they can't do everything that we might like.

tom

--
Swords not words!