Historic droughts inventory of references to legal regulation 1976-2012 consist of the following files:
File name	File description	
HD_LegalRegulation_dataFile.csv 
	This file comprises a collection of 518 extracts from both House of Commons and House of Lords Debates about the legal regulation of water resources in the UK during six key drought episodes, i.e. 1976, 1984, 1995, 2003-6, 2010-2. The extracts are coded with reference to core concepts developed during the Historic Droughts Project, i.e. Drivers, Impacts of and Responses to drought, with subsidiary coding of changes in the State of water resource management and Pressures contributing to the development of drought conditions. Where relevant some of the data is coded with reference to NUTS (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics) regions in order to indicate with reference to which local or regional area Parliamentarians debate the management of water resources. The data set enables analysis of Parliamentarians’ perceptions of how the regulatory framework in the UK for water resources, and drought more specifically helps to alleviate periodic water shortages, but can also be limited in doing so. 	
HD_LegalRegulation_supportingInformation.rft	This file provides an account of how the data were collected, extracted and prepared for inclusion in the droughts inventory of legal regulation. The file also explains how this Inventory can be searched and used for social science, and specifically socio-legal research.