VERIFIED Part of What we found: laws passed, then left switched off
Explore the detail
- What we counted: all 544 UK Public General Acts passed from 2010 to 2025, using legislation.gov.uk's open data. A "part" is a section or schedule paragraph. "Not in force" means legislation.gov.uk marks it as never in force and its text is still on the statute book.
- The five-year measure: 369 Acts passed from January 2010 to October 2021 have reached their fifth anniversary (consolidation Acts excluded). 88 of them (24%) still had at least one part not in force at that point.
- Caveats: a snapshot as of 9 Oct 2026, and legislation.gov.uk has not yet applied some commencement updates to 29 Acts. A one-line amendment counts the same as a whole scheme. Some gaps are deliberate (emergency backstops, schemes replaced by later laws). Consolidation Acts, which carry over older uncommenced changes, are left out of the headline figures; the chart includes the Sentencing Act 2020.
Explorer Pointers
- The register: every Act with parts not in force (our data, free CSV)
- legislation.gov.uk: UK Public General Acts (opens in new tab)
Topics: Laws not in force Switch-on orders
Earlier dots
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The lawFinding
Once a law stalls, it stays stalled: 58 of 79 stuck Acts haven't had a single new switch-on order in five years.
Topics: Laws not in force Switch-on orders
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The lawFinding
The care cap: passed in 2014, never switched on, still on the books.
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The lawFinding
The government doesn't publish a regular list of laws left switched off. So we made one.
Topics: Transparency Laws not in force
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Said vs doneFinding
Starter Homes: 200,000 promised in 2015, a law passed in 2016, none built, and those sections never switched on.
Topics: Starter Homes Housing Promises vs delivery Laws not in force
Last checked 9 Oct 2026. Corrections: Corrections policy · Archive