Title, commencement and application

1.—(1) The title of these Regulations is the Commons Registration (General) (Amendment) (Wales) Regulations 2007.

(2) These Regulations come into force on 1 October 2007.

(3) These Regulations apply in relation to Wales.

(4) In these Regulations, “the 1966 Regulations” (“Rheoliadau 1966”) means the Commons Registration (General) Regulations 1966(3).

Revocations

2.  The following provisions of the 1966 Regulations are revoked—

(a) regulation 32 (official searches and certificates);

(b) regulation 35 (supply of certain forms);

(c) in Schedule 1 (forms), Form 21 and its duplicate; and

(d) in Schedule 3 (fees for searches etc.), the first and second items in the table.

3.  The following Regulations are revoked—

(a) the Commons Registration (General) (Amendment) Regulations 1982(4);

(b) the Commons Registration (General) (Amendment) Regulations 1989(5); and

(c) the Commons Registration (General) (Amendment) (Wales) Regulations 2003(6).

Amendment of the 1966 Regulations

4.  In regulation 34(1) of the 1966 Regulations, for “for searches and official certificates of search, and for certified copies and extracts”, substitute “for certified copies and extracts”.

Explanatory Note

(This note is not part of the Regulations)

These Regulations revoke, on 1 October 2007, the provisions in the Commons Registration (General) Regulations 1966 (S.I. 1966/1471) (“the 1966 Regulations”) relating to official searches of the commons registers and certificates of search insofar as those provisions apply in relation to Wales and make a related amendment to those Regulations.

A search of the commons registers will instead be possible through the new question which has been added to Part II of the revised Supplementary Enquiries of Local Authority Form, CON 29O.

Regulation 35 (supply of certain forms) of the 1966 Regulations is also revoked in view of the discontinuance of the arrangements for the Office of Public Sector Information (formerly H.M. Stationery Office) to supply the forms specified in that regulation.

A full regulatory impact assessment of the effect of the change in the arrangements for searches of the commons registers was published for the Commons Act 2006 (c. 26). The assessment can be viewed on Defra’s website at www.defra.gov.uk.