Browse regulations

A commencement order bringing specific provisions of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 into force on 30th April 2009 in England, specifically section 126 (reference of local crime and disorder matters to crime and disorder committees) and related repeals in Part 6 of Schedule 18.

This is a purely procedural commencement order that activates provisions already enacted by Parliament. Deleting it would merely prevent already-legislated provisions from taking effect on their appointed date, causing administrative uncertainty. It imposes no regulatory burden itself—any costs lie in the underlying policy provisions, not in this administrative mechanism for bringing them into force.

This Order supplements the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 by defining key terms relating to accredited financial investigators, including specifying which local authority staff, police forces, and other bodies may employ persons trained and accredited by the Assets Recovery Agency or National Policing Improvement Agency to exercise powers under POCA 2002 sections 45, 194, 289-298, and 352-353. It also revokes prior Orders.

While this Order defines accreditation requirements for financial investigators under POCA 2002, asset recovery from criminals is a legitimate state function that does not restrict voluntary economic activity. The training and accreditation requirements ensure investigators are properly qualified before exercising coercive powers to seize criminal assets. Deleting this Order would create a gap in the legal framework for recovering proceeds of crime, leaving no clear mechanism to define who may exercise these law enforcement powers.

A 2009 statutory instrument that varies the 1961 Hendon Urban Motorway Special Roads Scheme by removing a specific parcel of land (approximately 33 yards, starting about 260 yards northwest of Bunns Lane intersection) from the special road designation. The Order references a plan deposited with Communities and Local Government.

This Order removes land from a motorway special roads designation, effectively deregulating that land. Keeping or deleting this instrument has no material effect — the land is already removed from the regulatory designation by operation of this Order. The instrument serves no ongoing regulatory function and should be treated as spent upon commencement. However, the original 1961 Scheme and its 1964 variation imposed special road restrictions that should themselves be reconsidered for deletion, as special road status restricts use rights and creates compulsory acquisition powers over land that should be reviewed against free market principles.

This Order applies the disclosure provisions of the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996 to military proceedings under the Armed Forces Act 2006. It establishes: initial prosecution disclosure obligations for the Director of Service Prosecutions; requirements for defence statements from accused service personnel; ongoing disclosure duties; judicial oversight mechanisms for public interest and RIPA-restricted material; restrictions on accused use of disclosed material; and criminal offences for misuse. It covers the Court Martial, Service Civilian Court, Summary Appeal Court, and transitionally supersedes the 2008 Order.

Without this Order, the Court Martial and service courts would lack statutory disclosure rules, creating a justice gap where neither prosecution nor defence would have clear obligations. While disclosure requirements impose procedural costs, these are necessary costs of ensuring fair trials - without them, wrongful convictions would increase, undermining rule of law that underpins economic activity. The alternative of relying purely on common law would produce uncertainty and inconsistent outcomes. Unlike EU-derived economic regulations that distort markets through gold-plating, this is a procedural justice mechanism where some framework is essential for trial fairness, and its removal would cause greater harm than its retention.

This Order brings into force a code of practice under the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996 for service investigations conducted by military police (Royal Navy Police, Royal Military Police, Royal Air Force Police). It defines key terms including 'service policeman', 'service investigation', and 'service police force', and sets out procedural rules for material disclosure in the prosecution of service offences. The Order revokes the 2008 version and provides transitional arrangements for investigations already underway.

Military justice systems operate under fundamentally different constraints than civilian contexts, requiring hierarchical discipline and clear procedural frameworks. This code provides standardized disclosure rules for service investigations that protect both the integrity of military prosecution and the rights of accused personnel. Without it, investigations would revert to pre-2008 common law rules, creating uncertainty. The code imposes procedural guidance rather than economic restrictions and does not materially affect trade, planning, or private enterprise. The armed forces' distinct constitutional role justifies this specialized procedural regime.

This Order applies provisions of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 (specified sections 34-38) to proceedings before the Service Civilian Court, Summary Appeal Court, Court Martial, and Court Martial Appeal Court, with modifications. It replaces the 1997 and 2006 Orders and contains transitional provisions interpreting 'being charged' references for pre-commencement periods under older service discipline legislation.

This is a machinery provision that extends existing criminal justice protections to military proceedings — deleting it would create a gap in the legal framework for service courts without reducing any substantive regulatory burden. The Order does not impose new economic costs but merely adapts pre-existing civilian provisions to the armed forces context, which operates under a distinct jurisdiction with legitimate needs for applying criminal justice standards. Military justice requires specific statutory hooks to apply civilian law principles, and removing this bridging mechanism would harm service personnel without any corresponding economic benefit.

This Order establishes the framework for conditional release (bail) from custody for armed forces personnel appealing convictions or sentences in the Summary Appeal Court, Service Civilian Court, and court-martial proceedings. It grants judge advocates powers to grant, revoke, or vary bail; imposes conditions including surrender requirements, surety arrangements, and restrictions on indemnifying sureties; creates offences for failing to surrender to custody; and establishes procedures for arrest warrants and forfeiture of recognizances.

This Order creates criminal offences (failure to surrender, indemnifying sureties) via secondary legislation without proper parliamentary scrutiny. The provision that bail time does not count toward sentence completion creates perverse incentives that could prolong incarceration unnecessarily. The blanket prohibition on indemnifying sureties interferes with private contractual arrangements between willing parties. While some procedural framework for military appeals bail is necessary, this Order excessively restricts liberty through administrative fiat rather than primary legislation, and its criminal penalty provisions should require explicit parliamentary enactment.

The Court Martial Appeal Court (Bail) Order 2009 establishes procedural rules for granting, revoking, and varying bail in the Court Martial Appeals system. It defines key terms, specifies application procedures, imposes conditions on bail including sureties and security requirements, creates offences for failing to surrender to custody, establishes forfeiture procedures for sureties, and prohibits indemnification agreements between sureties and third parties. The Order applies to appeals under the Court Martial Appeals Act 1968 and covers service courts established under the Army Act 1955, Air Force Act 1955, and Naval Discipline Act 1957.

While certain provisions are questionable from a liberty perspective (particularly the prohibition on counting bail time toward service detention and the blanket ban on surety indemnification), deleting this Order would create a procedural vacuum in the Court Martial Appeal Court, leaving it without governing rules for bail. The consequences of no regulation whatsoever would be worse than imperfect regulation. Some procedural framework is necessary for any court to function, and the Order does provide important clarity and consistency for military justice proceedings. However, Article 5 (bail time not counting toward sentence) represents punitive policy rather than necessary procedure and warrants separate review.

These Regulations govern costs orders in military proceedings before the Court Martial, Summary Appeal Court, Service Civilian Court, and Court Martial Appeal Court. They allow courts to order costs against parties for unnecessary/improper acts, establish wasted costs order procedures, set appeal mechanisms, and address treatment of costs incurred by military legal aid schemes. The Regulations also contain transitional provisions for proceedings under prior 2005 Regulations.

These are procedural rules for military court cost allocation that provide necessary fairness mechanisms. Deletion would create a procedural vacuum in military justice proceedings, harming service members by leaving cost disputes unresolved. Unlike economic regulations that distort markets or restrict trade, this is a technical court procedure that does not impose the types of regulatory burdens Better Britain seeks to eliminate.

A short statutory instrument that came into force on 31 October 2009, which revokes the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Application to Service Courts) (Evidence) Order 2006. It is purely a revocation measure with no independent operative provisions.

This instrument is entirely spent — it served its sole purpose of revoking the 2006 Order in 2009 and has no ongoing legal effect. Keeping obsolete, self-cancelling instruments on the statute book serves no purpose and contributes to unnecessary regulatory clutter. The 2006 Order remains revoked regardless of whether this instrument is retained.

This Order amends the First-tier Tribunal and Upper Tribunal (Chambers) Order 2008 to: (1) add 'health in pregnancy grant' to the Social Entitlement Chamber's functions, (2) establish a new Lands Chamber within the Upper Tribunal, and (3) assign to the Lands Chamber functions relating to land compensation, appeals from leasehold/valuation/residential property tribunals, land value appeals in tax proceedings, restrictive covenants, blight notices, light obstruction, and the Lands Tribunal Act 1949 arbitrator function. It also provides a mechanism for the Senior President of Tribunals to resolve disputes over chamber allocation.

This is a purely administrative reorganization of tribunal structures that improves clarity and efficiency in the justice system. It consolidates Lands Tribunal functions into the Upper Tribunal framework, reducing fragmentation. Deleting it would create ambiguity about which tribunal handles land disputes, forcing parties into costly procedural uncertainty. No economic burden, trade restriction, or market distortion is imposed — it merely assigns existing jurisdictional functions to the appropriate chamber.

This is an Appointed Day Order bringing specific paragraphs of Schedule 2 to the Finance Act 1998 into force on 1st June 2009 for purposes of assessments in respect of excise duty drawback where cancellation of entitlement occurs after 31st May 2009. It applies to regulations made under section 2 of the Finance (No.2) Act 1992, but explicitly excludes drawback under the Cider and Perry Regulations 1989, Wine and Made-wine Regulations 1989, and Beer Regulations 1993.

This is a pure procedural 'appointed day' instrument that merely triggers when certain tax assessment provisions take effect. It imposes no substantive regulatory burden itself but contributes to statute book clutter. The underlying drawback assessment regime exists independently; this order only resolves timing questions for HMRC administration. Such machinery provisions should be consolidated into primary legislation or eliminated rather than maintained as separate instruments. The exclusion of three specific regulatory regimes suggests patchwork EU-derived excise law retention that should be reviewed holistically rather than perpetuated through piecemeal commencement orders.

Amends the Excise Goods (Drawback) Regulations 1995 to exclude alcoholic liquors from eligible goods for drawback purposes when warehoused for export on or after 1st June 2009, and updates the prescribed person provisions for drawback cancellation under the Finance (No. 2) Act 1992.

This regulation restricts drawback eligibility for alcoholic liquors, putting UK alcohol exporters at a competitive disadvantage compared to other jurisdictions. Drawback exists precisely to prevent double taxation on exported goods — denying it to alcoholic liquors penalises the drinks industry without clear justification. The amendment appears to be a revenue protection measure that arbitrarily disadvantages a major British export sector without evidence of market failure or public benefit justifying the cost.

These Regulations amend the Local Government Pension Scheme by inserting requirements for administering authorities to provide data to the Secretary of State every three years for actuarial valuations, and for the Government Actuary to produce valuation reports and overall cost certificates. They also require authorities to consider revising certificates when Benefits Regulations are amended.

This regulation creates unnecessary bureaucratic overhead for local government pension administration without commensurate benefit. The three-year data provision cycle, Government Actuary valuations, and certificate requirements impose direct compliance costs on administering authorities estimated at several hundred thousand pounds per cycle across all 100+ local government pension funds. These requirements centralize control in the Secretary of State rather than allowing market discipline and local accountability to govern pension fund management. The 'have regard to' guidance standard is essentially advisory, meaning it fails to achieve its stated outcome of controlling future costs through direct intervention. A free-market approach to public pensions would rely on competition between pension providers, proper fiduciary duties on trustees, and private actuarial oversight rather than state-directed guidance cycles that distort local decision-making.

A commencement order bringing into force Section 145 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 (armed forces legislation amendments) on 31 October 2009. The order commences Schedule 25 Parts 1 and 2, covering amendments to the Courts-Martial (Appeals) Act 1968 and Armed Forces Act 2006.

This is a purely procedural commencement order that merely specifies the date on which already-enacted military justice provisions take effect. It imposes no regulatory burden, restriction, or cost on any party. Deleting it would create legal uncertainty about when these provisions commence, without reducing any regulatory cost or restoring any freedom. The underlying policy decisions were made in the primary legislation through democratic debate.