Subject matter and legislative competence of devolved legislatures National Underground Asset Register
Legislative competence as it relates to Wales for the subject matter of Part 3 of the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991 (transport and street works) ("NRSWA 1991") is devolved to Wales. These provisions make amendments to NRSWA 1991 (including Part 3) in relation to this devolved subject matter. The relevant legislation for Northen Ireland is the Street Works (Northern Ireland) Order 1995 ("SWNIO 1995 "). Similarly, these measures make amendments to this Order, dealing with the transferred matter of transport and street works.
	The effective implementation and operation of NUAR will require the Secretary of State to exercise a range of functions, including a number of regulation-making powers. These will comprise a combination of existing powers, already found in the relevant legislation, and new powers inserted by this Act. Some of these existing powers in the relevant legislation are, at present, solely conferred on the Welsh Ministers or the Northern Ireland Executive (in relation to Wales or Northern Ireland, as the case may be).
	The NUAR provisions in the Act will make some of these existing powers, which are solely exercisable by the Welsh Ministers or the Department for Infrastructure in Northern Ireland (as the case may be), concurrently exercisable with the Secretary of State; this is to reflect that these existing powers will be used by the Secretary of State to implement NUAR, but could also be used for other purposes by the relevant devolved administration ("mixed purposes powers"). The provisions will also confer some new mixed purposes powers on the Secretary of State; provision is also made for these new mixed purpose powers to be concurrently exercisable by the Welsh Ministers and Department for Infrastructure for Northern Ireland. The NUAR provisions also remove existing (but uncommenced) powers from the Welsh Ministers and the Department for Infrastructure in Northern Ireland. This is in parallel with such powers also being removed from the Secretary of State in relation to England; the removal of these specific (and uncommenced) powers from all parties is the consequence of the underlying (and uncommenced) duty imposed on undertakers, to which those powers relate, being removed from NRSWA 1991 by these provisions.