Alan Pawsey, Head of Statutory Publications and Queen's Printer Functions, has asked me to respond to your letter of 17 September in connection with the current status of the sample of inclosure Acts sent with your letter.

  Your letter asks for any information about any change in status of these local Acts since December 1996 (the date to which the latest Supplement to the Chronological Table of Local Legislation takes the matter).

  All the Acts in the sample have remained unaffected to December 1997 according to our records. We prepare the Tables of Effects to the Statutes (and the Supplements mentioned above) here in this office and a scan of the recently completed electronic text of the 1997 Tables has come up with a negative.

  Since the work for the Tables of Effects for 1998 is incomplete we cannot give such a definitive reply as to the status today. However a (not yet fully perfected) search of the texts of the Acts and Statutory Instruments of 1998 to date (via our Internet website http://www.hmso.gov.uk) has not turned up any repeals or amendments to your Acts.

  Looking at the text of the current Statute Law (Repeals) Bill, it appears that there are no proposed repeals of the local inclosure Acts in your sample. In fact there are no proposals to repeal any local inclosure Acts.. in the 1995 Statute Law (Repeals) Act there were some repeals of "local" inclosure Acts in Nottinghamshire and Bedfordshire. I have put the word "local" in inverted commas because although all the inclosure Acts relevant to your committee's investigation are of a local nature, the ones before 1797 were in the Private Act series. The Act relevant to the case against the Flamborough Parish Council mentioned in your letter was a Private Act of 1765. After 1797 (when the Local Act series of Acts started) many inclosure Acts continued to be put on the Private Act roll so that for example in 1804 (41 Geo. 3) there were 107 inclosure Acts which were placed on the Private Act roll. The status of these Acts to 1997 will be recorded in the new Chronological Table of the Private and Personal Acts prepared at the Law Commission and due for publication early next year. No doubt you are in touch, via John Saunders, with Anthony Rowland who is both in charge of the preparation of the new Table and deals with local Act repeals at the Law Commission. The Notes on the Bill for the 1995 Statute Law (Repeals) Bill had some useful stuff on the local inclosure Acts. Equally I expect you are aware of some Public General inclosure Acts being proposed coincidentally for repeal in the current 1998 Statute Law (Repeals) Bill.

  Although these proposed repeals may not be strictly relevant to your investigations, the Notes on the Bill may again be helpful to you. On the whole local inclosure Acts have remained unrepealed and unaffected by later legislation.

Mrs Trissa Orange

September 1998