Scottish Ministers have made SSI 2026/261, the Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Act 2026 (Commencement No. 1) Regulations 2026. Made on 15 September 2026 and laid before the Scottish Parliament on 17 September 2026, the instrument itself comes into force on 1 October 2026. Its function is procedural but important. The regulations do not restate the policy of the parent Act; they set the legal timetable for when selected parts of that Act begin to operate.
The explanatory note states that the Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Act 2026 received Royal Assent on 11 March 2026. Part 6 of the Act, covering sections 36 to 40, came into force on 12 March 2026 by virtue of section 39 of the Act itself. This commencement instrument brings further provisions into force in two stages. Regulation 2(1) appoints 1 October 2026 for the provisions listed in Part 1 of the schedule, while regulation 2(2) appoints 1 January 2027 for the provisions listed in Part 2.
The drafting matters because the October date is not automatically a full commencement for every provision listed in Part 1. Regulation 2(3) states that, where a purpose is specified in column 3 of the Part 1 table, the relevant provision comes into force on 1 October 2026 only for that stated purpose. In plain terms, that allows some sections to be switched on for defined preparatory or administrative uses before wider commencement. The schedule therefore needs close reading: a provision may be legally live in October for one function without yet being in full operational effect.
The source text provided here does not reproduce the schedule tables, so the instrument confirms the dates but not, in this excerpt, the exact list of sections attached to each phase. That is often where commencement orders become operationally significant, because the headline dates are only half the picture. For colleges, universities, training providers and governance bodies, the immediate task is to map the schedule against the parent Act and identify which duties, powers or institutional changes start on 1 October and which wait until 1 January. Implementation planning should follow the appointed dates rather than the Royal Assent date alone.
This is why commencement instruments matter beyond parliamentary formality. If a body acts before a power has commenced, it risks relying on a provision that is not yet in force. If it delays after commencement, it may miss the point at which a statutory duty, governance requirement or funding rule begins to apply. The regulations also define references to the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Act 2005 as 'the 2005 Act' and to the 2026 Act as 'the Act'. That is standard drafting, but it shows that the commencement exercise sits within an existing statutory framework rather than operating as a standalone measure.
The instrument was signed at St Andrew's House in Edinburgh on 15 September 2026 by Alyn Smith, authorised to sign on behalf of the Scottish Ministers. As a Commencement No. 1 instrument, it also points to phased implementation, with scope for later orders if further provisions of the 2026 Act have not yet been appointed. For the sector, the practical message is straightforward. The legal change is not a single start date but a staged timetable: some provisions begin on 1 October 2026, further provisions begin on 1 January 2027, and some October commencements may be limited to specified purposes only.