Policy background
- From 5 December 2015 – 29 February 2016 the Government ran a public consultation to explore whether it would be beneficial to introduce a new civil order to protect victims of stalking.
- The consultation sought views on:
- The effectiveness of existing interventions;
- The challenges of identifying stalking in its early stages;
- How a stalking protection order might work in practice; and
- What penalty should be imposed for breach of an order.
- In particular, responses to the consultation highlighted a gap in the existing protective order regime and the need for earlier intervention in stalking cases, in order to protect victims and to address emerging patterns of behaviour in perpetrators before they become entrenched or escalate in severity.
- 69% of consultation respondents did not believe that existing protective orders provide sufficient protection to victims of ‘stranger stalking’, as they apply to a domestic abuse context and require that a relationship has existed or still exists.
- In its response to the public consultation published in December 2016, the Government committed to legislate to introduce a new civil stalking protection order as soon as Parliamentary time allowed.
