Enactment (British legal term)

In the law of the United Kingdom, the term enactment may refer to the whole or part of a piece of legislation or to the whole or part of a legal instrument made under a piece of legislation. In Wakefield Light Railways Company v Wakefield Corporation,^[1] Ridley J. said:

The word "enactment" does not mean the same thing as "Act." "Act" means the whole Act, whereas a section or part of a section in an Act may be an enactment.^[2]

In Postmaster General v Birmingham Corporation, Roache LJ said "I am unable to accept the ingenious argument that the word 'enactment' in" section 7 of the Telegraph Act 1878 "refers to special or ad hoc enactments dealing with specific works and does not refer to general enactments . . . No such limitation upon the word "enactment" is expressed, and in my judgement none can or should be implied."^[3]

In Rathbone v Bundock, Ashworth J said that in "some contexts the word "enactment" may include within its meaning not only a statute but also a statutory regulation but, as it seems to me, the word does not have that wide meaning in" the Road Traffic Act 1960. "On the contrary, the language used in a number of instances strongly suggests that in this particular Act the draftsman was deliberately distinguishing between an enactment and a statutory regulation: see, for example, section 267 and Schedule 18."^[4]

See also R v Bakewell (1857) E & B 848 at 851, Burgh of Grangemouth v Stirlingshire and Falkirk Water Board, 1963, SLT 242, Allsop v North Tyneside Metropolitan Borough Council [1991] RVR 209, (1992) 156 LGR 1007, DC.