Current law, changes and limits

The baseline is 3 November 2026. These are the current legal positions and material unresolved changes behind the home answer. Individual care is primary; planning, research and public-health submissions also belong in the account. An operative duty, a conditional contract term, an administrative mandate and a proposed reform have different effects.

The digital requirements table records 56 classified rows. Confirmed duties do not imply universal provider coverage: the sender, information, recipient, method, timing and governing conditions remain essential.

Current requirements and changes

Development	Dated position in the research	Meaning for the account
UK GDPR information rights	Current Articles 15 and 20 provide conditional electronic-copy and portability duties; amended request-handling rules apply.	Neither is an unconditional right to a complete real-time care portal. Public-task processing is outside the portability route. ^{260, 261, 173}
English GP digital terms	Current GMS/PMS regulations specify SCR, GP Connect, GP2GP and patient online access; GP Connect provisions were inserted from 1 October 2025.	These are prescribed contract requirements with their own patient, system and timing conditions, not all-private-provider obligations. ^{183, 184}
English NHS Standard Contract 2026/27	Published full-length service conditions specify scoped digital discharge/clinic-letter delivery and key GP-information availability.	Binding through the actual adopted contract and service categories; GP and other-recipient methods differ. ^{181, 182}
England information/IT standards	SI 2025/807 preserves the old statutory framework for pre-7 July 2025 standards; supplier-related changes commenced 5 February 2026.	Saved have-regard duties, enhanced powers and applicable contractual conformance must remain distinct. ^{192, 014}
Existing DCB clinical-safety standards	NHS England’s June 2026 review distinguishes existing have-regard notices from future enhanced standards powers.	Actual notice, actor and contract govern applicability; not a blanket UK-wide statutory mandate. ¹⁰³
DAPB4101 pathology reporting	Original notice states 30 April 2025; later implementation material describes a pilot, intended April 2027 assurance and an extended date still to be published.	Replacement timetable remains unresolved. April 2027 is not a verified new conformance deadline, and nationwide implementation is not proved. ^{187, 188, 189}
Welsh GMS digital terms	Current revised 2023 Regulations prescribe summary retrieval, GP2GP and mapped activity/appointment extraction.	Welsh statutory contract terms, not imported English duties. Specific scope, exceptions and timing apply. ¹⁹⁵
Welsh Control Standard	Version 5.0 identified. Front approval/review dates are 4 August 2025/4 August 2027; footers state 28 July 2025 effective date.	Prior version 4 currency gap is resolved. Actual organisational adoption and access conditions remain separate. ^{200, 046}
Welsh emergency-care reporting	WHC 2026/031 sets 31 March 2027 full implementation, replacing 1 April 2026, with daily unvalidated and monthly validated flows.	Administrative reporting mandate in its ED/MIU scope; not proof of complete rollout or an unrestricted care-viewing right. ⁰⁴⁸
Scottish Community Glaucoma Service	No.3 Directions 2026, issued 28 October, took effect 1 November 2026 apart from fees and replaced No.2.	Current defined digital EPR-update/upload duties and required clinician terms. Earlier 2023/2025 Directions are not the current authority for this pathway. ²¹⁶
Scottish Care Reform Act 2025	Section 1 in force 7 January 2026; sections 2–7 recorded prospective at the baseline.	Ministerial integrated-record duty does not itself impose a provider-wide dataset connection or establish an operative Part 1 sharing scheme. ^{111, 112}
NI 2016 data-processing Act	Act commenced 12 April 2016; the separately checked statutory secondary-use machinery remained pending on the published record.	Keep commencement separate from implementation; no universal operative digital-return duty or project approval inferred. ^{084, 121, 125}
NI capacity and representative provisions	Current law and official implementation evidence show only partial MCA 2016 implementation; identified LPA/deputy sections 97–99 and 116 remain prospective.	Use the completed bounded map; do not import English/Welsh MCA or manufacture a current NI welfare-LPA route. ^{249, 250}
Health Bill 2026	Lords committee stage began 28 October 2026 at the baseline.	Proposed single-patient-record reforms remain separate from operative digital requirements. ⁰¹⁷

National service reporting

The four national examples now explain hospital appointments, GP appointment extraction, CGS assessment claims and KH03a bed/activity reports. Reused duties are counted once. The catalogue adds the qualified NI report and an explicitly operational SMR01 contrast. SMR’s six-week target and NI’s period-specific administrative instruction retain their legal-force limits.

Completed bounded work and remaining limits

The capacity, children and representative-authority map now covers the defined hospital-to-community healthcare/social-care transition across all four nations. It separates care decisions, disclosure and representative access. This resolves the earlier baseline-map gap; it does not decide a disputed case, validate an individual grant/order or replace separate liberty, placement or safeguarding rules. ^{241, 245, 249, 254, 258, 263}

The Scottish Care Reform and NI 2016 secondary-use implementation findings remain preserved in the implementation record. Their dated checks are resolved and parked, with explicit reopening triggers. They are not recurring open searches and were not reopened by this evidence integration.

Actual private-provider, local service and access agreements remain unverified where not supplied. Administrative Welsh circulars and operational service descriptions are not silently converted into statutory directions or executed contracts. The protection examples now map bounded sensitive-information/access restrictions. Wider specialist cases and the DAPB4101 replacement timetable retain explicit limits in the validation queue.

The examples cover summary records, blood tests/results and hospital discharge. The evidence matrix records support and legal force; it does not approve a live exchange.

Protection law and digital routes

The protection account adds the current English child-sharing duty operative from 30 September 2026, separate CP-IS requirements, Welsh reports, Scottish public/private distinctions and regulator notices, and current NI procedures. Scottish named-person/child-plan statutory provisions were repealed on 5 May 2025. NI's Adult Protection Bill and English prospective child-sex-offence reporting provisions are not current operative reporting duties. ^{313, 318, 319, 355, 356, 379}

Future English designation, standards and identifier milestones need their actual legal implementation. The exact protection catalogue records actor-specific digital routes and medium-neutral disclosure duties. ^{326, 327}