GovData Docs

Legislation API Reference

Search and retrieve UK legislation from legislation.gov.uk.

Base URL: https://api.govdata.dev/v1

Search Legislation

GET /v1/legislation/search

Full-text search across UK legislation. Filter by type and year.

Query parameters

Parameter Type Required Description
q string Yes Search query (matches title and content)
type string No ukpga (Act), uksi (SI). Also accepted but not yet loaded — returns no results: ukla, wsi, ssi, nisi, nisr, asp, asc, ukdsi
year integer No Year of enactment (e.g. 2025)
page integer No Page number (default 1, 20 results per page) 
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  "https://api.govdata.dev/v1/legislation/search?q=finance&type=ukpga&year=2025"

Response

{
  "data": [
      {
        "identifier": "ukpga/2025/12",
        "legislation_type": "ukpga",
        "type_name": "UK Public General Act",
        "year": 2025,
        "number": 12,
        "title": "Finance Act 2025",
        "enacted_date": "2025-03-20",
        "description": "An Act to grant certain duties, to alter other duties, and to amend the law relating to the national debt and the public revenue.",
        "commencement_date": null,
        "url": "https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2025/12"
      }
    ],
  "meta": {
    "api_version": "v1",
    "licence": "Open Government Licence v3.0",
    "source": "The National Archives",
    "source_url": "https://www.legislation.gov.uk"
  },
  "pagination": { "page": 1, "per_page": 25, "total": 1, "total_pages": 1 }
}

Get Legislation

GET /v1/legislation/:type/:year/:number

Retrieve a specific piece of legislation by type, year, and number.

Path parameters

Parameter Type Description
type string ukpga (Act), uksi (SI). Also accepted but not yet loaded — returns no results: ukla, wsi, ssi, nisi, nisr, asp, asc, ukdsi
year integer Year of enactment
number integer Legislation number within that year 
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  https://api.govdata.dev/v1/legislation/ukpga/2025/8

Response

{
  "data": {
    "identifier": "ukpga/2025/12",
    "legislation_type": "ukpga",
    "type_name": "UK Public General Act",
    "year": 2025,
    "number": 12,
    "title": "Finance Act 2025",
    "enacted_date": "2025-03-20",
    "description": "An Act to grant certain duties, to alter other duties, and to amend the law relating to the national debt and the public revenue.",
    "commencement_date": null,
    "url": "https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2025/12"
  },
  "meta": {
    "api_version": "v1",
    "licence": "Open Government Licence v3.0",
    "source": "The National Archives",
    "source_url": "https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2025/8"
  }
}

Legislation data is sourced from The National Archives with a sync scheduled every Sunday at 10am. Imports have landed in sporadic batches, so the corpus backfill remains partial and expanding. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Data Coverage

Source legislation.gov.uk (The National Archives)
Date range Partial and expanding
Records ~2,800 UK Public General Acts and Statutory Instruments (coverage expanding)
Updated Sync scheduled every Sunday at 10am; observed imports are sporadic batches
Limitations Backfill is partial and expanding: only ukpga and uksi currently contain data, with roughly 70 SIs per year loaded versus thousands published.