Commencement of the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023

Following the UK’s exit from the European Union, the government retained over 5000 EU laws with the plan to revoke them all in December 2023. In June 2023, the UK government amended the plan, and published the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 setting out in the Schedules a list of laws to be revoked, rather than revoking all of them.

The June 2023 update included a schedule of 600 laws to be revoked and the rationale behind the decision. The HSE stated that there were approximately 38 health and safety related EU laws that were on the schedule to be revoked in December 2023, mostly due to them being superseded or obsolete. There are some texts that have been revoked that will be removed from the Red-on-line database where appropriate, once there has been confirmation that the text is no longer in force. The changes will be processed as usual as part of the quarterly update process.

Government departments across the UK have also released several texts amending the wording of in regulations to remove reference to ‘retained EU law’ and have instead changed this to ‘assimilated law” or alike. These minor amendments don’t change compliance requirements and therefore will be updated accordingly on the Red-on-line database.

Key points:

• Very few EHS compliance requirements have changed with the commencement of the Act
• This is an evolving process and there is the possibility that there will be other texts revoked in the future
• Key changes in the future will be communicated as regulatory alerts