The AV Act 2024 is structured as a vertically integrated regime: a single primary statute carrying seven Parts that together cover entry control (Part 1), criminal liability (Part 2), policing and investigation (Part 3), marketing (Part 4), a bespoke service-level permit (Part 5), and adaptation of legacy regimes such as type approval and roadside testing (Part 6). The architecture is deliberately sequenced — authorisation under Part 1 conditions everything else: a vehicle must be 'authorised' before its user-in-charge can claim the s.47 immunity, before its operator can be licensed under Chapter 2, and before its marketing can lawfully use the protected terms in Part 4.
The Statement of Safety Principles under s.2 is the doctrinal anchor of authorisation. It is a statutory document the Secretary of State must prepare; authorisations under s.3 are then granted by reference to it. This is why the June 2025 call for evidence on the Statement 1 sits upstream of every other workstream — until it is laid in final form, the Part 1 authorisation gateway cannot fully open.
Part 5 sits in parallel to, not instead of, Parts 1–2. A permit under s.82 disapplies taxi, PHV and bus legislation (s.83) so that a self-driving passenger service is not stuck in the gap between a 'driver' and a 'no driver'; but the underlying vehicle still needs Part 1 authorisation and the service still operates within the criminal-liability framework of Part 2. Consent gates in ss.85–86 give licensing authorities (taxi/PHV) and relevant franchising bodies (buses) a veto over locally-significant deployments, with the SI 2026/439 procedure setting a six-week deemed-consent default (reg.6).
Enforcement is unusually pluralistic. Against regulated bodies, DfT can use compliance notices, redress notices and monetary penalties under Chapter 5 of Part 1, backed by warranted search powers under Chapter 4. Against permit holders, SI 2026/439 reg.5 lists nine grounds for variation, suspension or withdrawal, ranging from breach of permit condition to 'serious safety concerns', 'serious or repeated disruption to traffic', and unacceptable delay to emergency workers. The intended s.84 civil sanctions regime for APS infringements is, however, not yet commenced — SI 2026/437 explicitly excludes it — so for the moment the enforcement floor for permit holders is administrative (variation/suspension/withdrawal plus internal review), not penal.
Where the AV regime layers onto existing law, it does so by surgical amendment rather than displacement. Schedule 2 amends the Road Traffic Act 1988 (notably ss.3B, 34B, 192(1ZA)) and the Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018 s.8(1A) to embed AV concepts in the existing road-traffic offence and insurance machinery. Schedules 3 and 4 modify the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 to handle the new offences. The PAC's January 2025 report flagged the corollary — DfT does not expect to change road maintenance practices for AVs, so the regime assumes AV technology adapts to existing highway infrastructure, not the other way round 2.