Title
Enter a full title or part of a title to find results based on title. The search will show results that match on any part of the title. For example ‘Data’ will match ‘Data Protection Act’ and ‘The Data Retention Regulations’. To exclude a term, use the minus operator before the term you wish to exclude. For example searching ‘Data -protection’ would return ‘The Data Retention Regulations’ but not the ‘Data Protection Act’. Use double quotes for an exact match on a phrase e.g “Data Protection” would return ‘The Data Protection Act’ but not ‘The Protection of Vulnerable Groups (Data Handling) Regulations’. Alternatively, leave blank if you do not wish to specify a title match.
Language of legislation text
This will focus your search in either English or Welsh language text of legislation.
Searching the Welsh language text of Welsh legislation may produce more appropriate results if you are using a Welsh language search term.
Year
Select whether you would like to search across legislation for a particular year or range of years. This is not a required field and can be left empty if you do not wish to narrow your search by year.
Number
If you know the number of the legislation item you are looking for enter it here. There are several ways to search by number as some items of legislation are assigned multiple numbers each from different numbering systems. Where multiple numbering systems have been used, you can select which one you wish to search by from the drop down box. If you are unsure, we recommend you keep ‘main series’ selected.
Type
It is possible to narrow your search across a particular legislation type or set of legislation types by using the checkboxes. The first column shows all the possible primary legislation types, and the second column all the secondary legislation types. Select ‘All Legislation’ if you do not wish to restrict your search to particular types of legislation. See the Help section for advice about understanding different legislation types.
