Crime And Policing Act 2026

Policy background

Anti-social behaviour powers

1. Anti-social behaviour can be defined as ‘behaviour which causes, or is likely to cause, harassment, alarm or distress’. There are three main types of anti-social behaviour:
   1. Personal anti-social behaviour which is when a person targets a specific individual or group.
   2. Nuisance anti-social behaviour which is when a person causes trouble, annoyance or suffering to a community.
   3. Environmental anti-social behaviour which is when a person’s actions affect the wider environment, such as public spaces or buildings.
2. The Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 ("the 2014 Act") provides the police, local authorities and other local agencies with a range of tools and powers that they can use to respond to anti-social behaviour:
   1. Civil Injunctions are issued by the courts upon application from specific organisations such as the police and local authorities. Civil Injunctions are intended to target behaviour such as public drunkenness, bullying, being an abusive neighbour and vandalism. An injunction will include relevant prohibitions to get individuals to stop behaving anti-socially. It can also include positive requirements to get the individual to deal with the underlying cause of their behaviour (for example, attending alcohol awareness classes). Though they are a civil rather than a criminal order (in that they are not linked to a criminal offence), breaching an injunction is treated as a contempt of court (punishable with a prison sentence of up to two years, a fine, or both) and the court can include a power of arrest for such breaches.
   2. Criminal Behaviour Orders ("CBO") are issued after an individual has been convicted for any criminal offence. An order will include prohibitions to stop the anti-social behaviour but can also include positive requirements to get the offender to address the underlying causes of their behaviour. Breach of a CBO is a criminal offence, subject to a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment, a fine, or both.
   3. Dispersal powers can be used upon authorisation by a police officer of the rank of inspector or above to require individuals to disperse from a location. These powers can only be authorised when members of the public in the location are being harassed, alarmed or distressed, or when there is localised crime and disorder. An authorisation lasts for 48 hours. Failure to comply with a dispersal direction is criminal offence, subject to a maximum penalty of three months’ imprisonment (for persons over 18 years), a level 4 fine (£2,500), or both.
   4. Community Protection Notices ("CPN") are intended to stop a person aged 16 or over, business or organisation committing anti-social behaviour which spoils a community’s quality of life. They can deal with a range of behaviours; for instance, it can deal with noise nuisance and litter on private land. A CPN can include requirements to ensure that problems are rectified and that steps are taken to prevent the anti-social behaviour occurring again. CPNs can be issued by local authority officers, the police or social landlords. Breach of a notice is a criminal offence, punishable by a level 4 fine (£2,500) in the case of an individual or an unlimited fine in the case of a business. As an alternative to a prosecution, breach may be dealt with by means of a £100 fixed penalty notice. A court can also then impose a remedial order to require an individual to carry out work specified in the order.
   5. Public Spaces Protection Orders ("PSPO") are orders which bans taking part in certain acts in designated areas that would not otherwise be a criminal offence, for example, the consumption of alcohol. They are imposed by a local authority. Breach of a PSPO is a criminal offence, punishable by a level 3 fine (£1,000). As an alternative to a prosecution, breach may be dealt with by means of a £100 fixed penalty notice.
   6. Closure Notices and Orders allow the police or a local authority to close premises quickly which are being used, or likely to be used, to commit nuisance or disorder. A closure notice can be issued by a police officer or a local authority and can bar any person who is not a resident accessing the premises for a maximum of 48 hours. A court issued closure order can close premises for up to six months and can restrict all access. Breach of a closure notice or closure order is a criminal offence, punishable by a maximum penalty of three months’ imprisonment or six months’ imprisonment respectively, a fine, or both.
3. The Labour Party’s 2024 General Election manifesto argued that powers to tackle anti-social behaviour had been weakened (for example, breaches of a civil injunction do not attract an automatic power of arrest and are punishable as a contempt of court rather than as a criminal offence) and committed to introduce new "Respect Orders", a new preventative civil order to address persistent and/or highly disruptive anti-social behaviour which can be used to prohibit a wide variety of anti-social behaviours. Chapter 1 of Part 1 provides for Respect Orders.
4. Separately, the then Government launched a consultation in March 2023 on proposals to amend a number of these existing powers to tackle anti-social behaviour (the consultation closed on 22 May 2023). 1 Amongst other things, the consultation sought views on the following proposals:
   1. Increasing the length of dispersal orders to 72 hours.
   2. Increasing the upper limit of fixed penalty notices for breaches of CPNs and PSPOs to £500.
   3. Extending Community Safety Accreditation Scheme (a scheme by which employees of local partners such as local authorities are accredited to use certain powers that are usually only available to the police) powers to include relevant anti-social behaviour powers.
5. The then Government’s response to the consultation was published on 14 November 2023. 2
6. Sections 3 and 4 give effect to the above proposals.
7. Anti-social behaviour involving vehicles, such as off-road bikes, is a concern which communities frequently raise with MPs (see, for example, Westminster Hall debate sponsored by Antonia Bance MP on 5 March 2025) and Police and Crime Commissioners. During the 2024 General Election campaign, the then shadow Home Secretary, the Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP, made a commitment to take action to prevent re-offending and improve police enforcement against this type of anti-social behaviour (Daily Mail , 9 June 2024). Section 8 gives effect to this commitment by amending existing police powers to seize motor vehicles being used in an anti-social manner (contained in section 59 of the Police Reform Act 2002 ("the 2002 Act")), by removing the requirement to first issue a warning to a person prior to seizing a vehicle which has been used in an anti-social manner.

Fly-tipping

1. Local authorities in England reported 1.26 million fly-tipping incidents to the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in 2024/25 3 . According to research by Eunomia, the estimated cost of fly-tipping to England’s economy was £392 million in 2018/19 4 . A research report by Research Futures 5 on effective enforcement suggests that 49% of the public think that fly-tipping is a problem in their area.
2. Local authorities have enforcement powers to help them tackle fly-tipping. They carried out 572,000 enforcement actions in 2024/25 which included issuing 69,000 Fixed Penalty Notices and 1,377 prosecutions.
3. The use of enforcement powers varies among local authorities. To support local authorities to consistently and appropriately exercise their existing fly-tipping enforcement powers, section 9 confers a duty on the Secretary of State to issue statutory guidance on local authorities’ powers to seize and search vehicles suspected of fly-tipping. It also contains a power for the Secretary of State to issue statutory guidance on fly-tipping enforcement; local authorities will be required to have regard to the guidance.

Begging

1. The Vagrancy Act 1824 ("the 1824 Act") criminalises all begging and many forms of rough sleeping in England and Wales. This Act was later extended in part to Scotland and to Northern Ireland. The 1824 Act was repealed in Scotland by the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 and now applies to England and Wales and Northern Ireland only. Section 81 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 ("the 2022 Act") provides for the repeal of the 1824 Act in England and Wales; section 81 is not yet in force. The Government intends to commence the repeal of the 1824 Act once replacement provision is in place. Such replacement provision will take two forms. First, the Government intends to update the statutory guidance issued under the 2014 Act as to the use of the powers in that Act to tackle begging where it meets the threshold of anti-social behaviour. Second, sections 11 and 12 provide for replacement offences of arranging or facilitating begging for gain and trespassing with intent to commit a criminal offence.

Knife crime

1. Offences involving knives or sharp instruments recorded by the police rose by 4% (50,973 offences) in year ending June 2024, compared with the previous year (48,409 offences) 6 . The police recorded 562 homicide offences in the year ending June 2024, of which 44 % were committed using a knife or other sharp instrument. This was a slight increase compared with 42% in the previous year. The latest provisional admissions data for NHS hospitals in England and Wales showed no change in the number of admissions for assault by a sharp object in the year ending June 2024. This was similar to the year ending June 2023 and 20% below the pre-pandemic years ending March 2020.   In its 2024 General Election manifesto, the Labour Party committed to halving knife crime in a decade as part of its Safer Streets Mission.
2. Under section 141A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 ("the 1988 Act"), it is illegal to sell a knife to anyone under 18. Carrying a knife and/or an offensive weapon in public without a good reason are criminal offences under section 139 of the 1988 Act and section 1 of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 respectively.  In addition, the importation, manufacture, possession and supply of prohibited offensive weapons is an offence under section 141 of the 1988 Act and the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959. To get knives off the streets, the Labour Party further committed in its manifesto to "strengthen rules to prevent online sales. Executives of online companies that flout these rules will be personally held to account through tough sanctions".  The Government held a consultation "Knives and offensive weapons: Consultation on personal liability measures on senior executive of online platforms or marketplaces" 7 from 13 November 2024 to 20 December 2024. The consultation sought views on proposals to give police the power to issue Content Removal Notices to online platforms and marketplaces and a designated senior executive. The notice would require them to remove specific illegal knife and offensive weapon related content within 48 hours. Failure to comply with a notice would lead to the designated senior executive being liable for a civil sanction of up to £10,000. In its response to the consultation, published on 24 April 2025 8 , the Government committed to giving effect to the proposals in the consultation modified so that if a company failed to comply with a Content Removal Notice, the police would be able to issue a Civil Penalty Notice against both to the company and the designated senior executive of that company.
3. On 9 September 2024, the then Home Secretary commissioned the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s lead for knife crime, Commander Stephen Clayman, to conduct an independent end-to-end review into the sale of knives online 9 . Commander Clayman report was published on 19 February 2025 10 . The review’s recommendations included the strengthening of age verification requirements for the online sale and delivery of bladed products and the introduction of a requirement on retailers to report bulk and suspicious sales of bladed articles and offensive weapons.
4. In response to the review, the Home Secretary announced on 19 February 2025 11 that the Government would bring forward a package of measures to strengthen the law on the online sale of knives. This included giving effect to the manifesto commitment to hold senior managers of online platforms personally liable for failing to remove illegal knife-related content from their platforms, and to Commander Clayman’s recommendations on age verification (extended to cover the online sale or hiring on crossbows) and reporting bulk and suspicious sales. Taken together these would be known as "Ronan’s Law" in honour of Ronan Kanda who was tragically killed in 2022 in a case of mistaken identity near his home in Wolverhampton aged 16.
5. Sections 13 to 27 and 32 to 43 and Schedule 4 give effect to these proposals.  
6. In April 2023, the Home Office ran a public consultation to expand and improve the tools available to the police and wider criminal justice system to limit the availability of knives that may be used in violent offences and disrupt knife possession. 12 These tools aim to help tackle wider knife crime, in particular the use of machetes and large knives. This was in response to significant public and parliamentary concern about increases in knife crime.
7. The consultation sought views on the following proposals requiring primary legislation:
   1. Whether additional powers should be given to the police to seize, retain and destroy lawfully held bladed articles if these are found by the police when in private property lawfully and they have reasonable grounds to suspect that the article(s) are likely to be used in connection with unlawful violence.
   2. Whether there is a need to increase the maximum penalty for the offence of importation, manufacture, sale , general supply and possession of prohibited offensive weapons (as provided for in section 141 of the 1988 Act and section 1 of the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959) and the offence of selling bladed articles to persons under 18 (as provided for in section 141A of the 1988 Act) from six months’ imprisonment to two years’ imprisonment, to reflect the severity of these offences.
   3. Whether there is a need for a separate possession offence of bladed articles and weapons with the intention to injure or cause fear of violence with a maximum penalty of four years’ imprisonment, bridging the gap between possession in public and on school or further education premises and threatening. This new offence is in addition to the offences of carrying a bladed article with the exception of a safety razor or folding pocketknife with a blade of less than three inches, in a public place or a bladed article or offensive weapon on school or further education premises (as provided for in section 139 and 139A of the 1988 Act); the offence to threaten somebody with an offensive weapon (provided for in section 1A of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953), or with a bladed article in public or a bladed article or offensive weapon on school or further education premises (provided in section 139AA of the 1988 Act); and to threaten somebody in private with a bladed article or offensive weapon (as provided in section 52 of the Offensive Weapons Act 2019).
8. Following the closure of the consultation in June 2023, the then Government published its response in August 2023. 13 Sections 28 to 31 give effect to these measures which were announced by the Home Secretary on 19 February 2025.

Firearms licensing: sound moderators

1. Sound moderators and flash suppressors are currently regulated as firearms under the Firearms Act 1968 ("the 1968 Act"). Their regulation requires certificate variations, police processing and dealer record keeping. On 21 February 2024 the previous Government launched a public consultation seeking views on proposed changes to the law regulating the possession of these accessories. Having considered all the responses, the current Government concluded in its response published on 17 June 2025 that the continued regulation of sound moderators and flash suppressors under existing firearms licensing controls served no public safety purpose and committed to bring forward legislation to remove them from the statutory definition of firearm set out in section 57 of the 1968 Act.
2. The Government saw merit in making it a requirement for a person to be in possession of a valid firearm or shot gun certificate, issued by the police, in order to lawfully possess a sound moderator or flash suppressor. This will ensure that these accessories are held lawfully only by those with a legitimate purpose and who have been subject to full suitability checks in order to possess a firearm or shot gun. This still removes the need for a firearms owner to apply to the police for a variation of their licence each time they acquire or dispose of a sound moderator or flash suppressor.
3. Section 44 and Schedule 5 give effect to these proposals. 

Retail Crime

1. Shop theft offences have been increasing, with the latest police recorded crime data showing 516,971 offences in the year to December 2024, an increase of 20% 14 compared to the previous year. Shop theft is a common offence in sentencing occasions for prolific offenders.15
2. Section 39 of the Criminal Justice Act 1998 provides for the offence of common assault and battery, but assaults against retail workers are not separately recorded. The British Retail Consortium Crime Report 2025 16 showed there were around 737,000 incidents of violence and abuse in 2023-24, or just over 2,000 incidents a day, up from 475,000, in the previous survey year. Figures published by Usdaw in March 2025 17 show that 77% workers said they had been verbally abused in the 12 months to December 2024. 53% received threats of violence and 10% were physically assaulted during the year. 
3. Shop theft is not a specific offence but constitutes theft under section 1 of the Theft Act 1968. As such it is triable either way, that is in either a magistrates’ court or the Crown Court. Section 22A of the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980 (as inserted by section 176 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014) provides that low-value shop theft (that is, where the value of the goods stolen is £200 or less) is a summary only offence. Under section 22A of the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980, shoplifters who steal goods equal to or below £200 are tried summarily in a magistrates’ court unless they elect trial in the Crown Court. There is a perception in the retail industry that the practical effect of the change made by section 176 of the 2014 Act was to down grade the police response to low-value shop theft.
4. Part 3 delivers on commitments made in the Labour Party’s 2024 General Election manifesto to "create a new specific offence for assaults on shopworkers that will protect them from threats and violence" and to "scrap the effective immunity for some shoplifting".
5. The manifesto commitments build on the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s Retail Crime Action Plan 18 , published in October 2023, which committed police forces across England and Wales to prioritise police attendance at the scene where violence has been used towards shop staff, where an offender has been detained by store security, and where evidence needs to be secured and can only be done by police personnel. Additionally, where CCTV or other digital images are secured, police will run this through the Police National Database to further aid efforts to identify prolific offenders or potentially dangerous individuals.

Child criminal exploitation

1. CCE is a form of child abuse where a child is exploited into taking part in criminal activity, often by gangs and organised criminal networks. CCE is typified by an imbalance of power that is unduly exercised by an adult who uses a child to commit crime for their or another adult’s benefit. A child victim cannot consent to their own abuse and exploitation, which they often do not recognise themselves.
2. CCE occurs across a variety of crime types. For example, children being exploited to work in cannabis factories, move drugs or money across the country, commit financial fraud, shoplift or pickpocket. Child criminal exploitation through county lines remains a significant risk to children, with 2,888 children recorded as having county lines involvement in 2023/24. 19
3. Although the Government estimates suggest there are approximately 14,500 children identified by social services in England as being exploited or at risk of CCE, 20 Criminal Justice System data show that only around 120 individuals are charged per year under existing offences, including under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and inchoate offences under sections 44 to 46 of the Serious Crime Act 2007, and only around 60 are sentenced. 21 This suggests a potential enforcement gap between the scale of offending and cases enforced under existing legislation. In addition, the Government is of the view that existing offences do not properly encapsulate the specific physical, psychological and emotional harm done to the child through criminal exploitation.
4. The Government was elected with a manifesto commitment to "introduce a new offence of criminal exploitation of children, to go after the gangs who are luring young people into violence and crime". The new offence was announced by the then Home Secretary on 22 February 2025. Sections 48 and 49 provide for a standalone CCE offence which targets the adult as the primary offender in causing harm to the child by exploiting them to commit criminal activity, whether or not the child goes on to commit criminality. The Government intends that this will provide a strong deterrent to gangs from enlisting children by charging them as child exploiters and create greater awareness of CCE to improve identification of victims. In addition, sections 50 to 64 and Schedules 6 to 8 provide for new civil preventative orders, the purpose of which are to prevent CCE conduct before it occurs or to prevent it from reoccurring.