Crime and Policing Bill 2025 – Collection (GOV.UK)

Crime and Policing Act 2026 - GOV.UK

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Collection

Crime and Policing Act 2026

Information relating to the Crime and Policing Bill 2025, which received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026.

From:

Home Office
and
Ministry of Justice

Published

25 February 2025

Last updated

11 May 2026
—

See all updates

Over the last 14 years, community policing has been downgraded, with neighbourhood officers pulled off the beat to fill shortages elsewhere, weakening connections with the communities they serve.

Trust in the police has been undermined by failures in vetting and the appalling misconduct of some officers.

Powers to combat antisocial behaviour and shoplifting have been weakened, leaving our town centres exposed. The justice system has been allowed to grind to a halt.

This is why the Crime and Policing Act 2026 will:

tackle the epidemic of serious violence and violence against women and girls that stains our society

equip police with the powers they need to combat antisocial behaviour, crime and terrorism

This act supports the government’s Safer Streets Mission to halve knife crime and violence against women and girls in a decade and rebuild public confidence in policing and the criminal justice system.

Measures in the Crime and Policing Act will take back our streets by:

Cracking down on crime and antisocial behaviour that blights our streets by:

introducing respect orders to better enable police and others to tackle persistent antisocial behaviour

introducing a specific offence of assaulting a retail worker

repealing section 176 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 which downgraded the police response to so-called low value shop theft

increasing the maximum penalties for offences relating to the sale of weapons whilst introducing a new offence of possessing a bladed article with intent to use unlawful violence

Giving the police the powers they need to better tackle criminal activity by:

taking tougher action on drugs through an expansion of drug testing on arrest

giving the police the powers they need to tackle theft by creating a new power to enter a premises without a warrant to search for and seize stolen goods, such as phones located using GPS tracking technology

giving the police greater access to the Driver and Vehicle Licencing Agency database to identify criminals

banning articles used to commit serious crime such as SIM Farms and electronic devices used in vehicle theft

Rebuilding public confidence in policing and the wider criminal justice system by:

giving chief offices of police forces the right to appeal the result of misconduct boards to the Police Appeals Tribunal

granting firearms officers subject to criminal proceedings anonymity up to the point of conviction

Tackling violence against women and girls by:

strengthening the management of offenders in the community and introduce enhanced notification requirements on registered sex offenders, including a bar of them changing their names where there is a risk of sexual harm

giving victims of stalking the right to know the identity of the perpetrator

introducing a new criminal offence of administering a harmful substance (including spiking)

criminalising pornography depicting strangulation or suffocation and so called ‘incest porn’

criminalising the making, adapting, supplying or offering to supply of so called ‘nudification tools’

strengthening the law around non-consensual intimate image abuse by creating new offences of ‘screenshotting’ an intimate image without consent, allowing courts to make deletion orders for non-consensual intimate images, and placing new duties on online platforms to ensure such images are taken down within 48 hours

Protecting children and vulnerable adults by:

implementing recommendations from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse including by introducing a new duty to report child sexual abuse

creating new offences of cuckooing and child criminal exploitation

introducing new offences related to the taking of intimate images without consent

making grooming behaviour a statutory aggravating factor

introducing a power to issue statutory guidance to tackle honour-based abuse

Ensuring the police and intelligence services have the powers they need to protect the British people from terrorism and hostile state threats by:

introducing a new youth diversion order, helping to manage the increasing number of young people arrested for terrorism-related activity

implementing other changes to terrorism legislation recommended by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation

Ministerial correspondence

Crime and Policing Billgovernment amendments for committee and report stage

29 April 2026

Correspondence

Factsheets

Crime and Policing Act 2026factsheets

19 May 2026

Policy paper

Crime and Policing Bill 2025factsheets

12 May 2026

Policy paper

Impact assessments

Crime and Policing Bill 2025impact assessments

29 April 2026

Impact assessment

Crime and Policing Bill 2025equality impact assessments

29 April 2026

Impact assessment

Crime and Policing Bill 2025economic notes

29 April 2026

Impact assessment

ECHR Memoranda

Crime and Policing Bill 2025ECHR supplementary memoranda

29 April 2026

Policy paper

Keeling Schedules

Crime and Policing Bill 2025Keeling Schedules

29 April 2026

Policy paper

Delegated powers memoranda

Crime and Policing Bill 2025delegated powers memoranda

29 April 2026

Policy paper

Updates to this page

Published 25 February 2025

Last updated 11 May 2026

+
show all updates

11 May 2026

Added a link to the Crime and Policing Act 2026factsheets.

29 April 2026

Updated to reflect enactment of the bill.

2 December 2025

Link to separate page on equality impact assessments added.

2 December 2025

Updated to link to new 'economic notes' page.

23 April 2025

Addition of new categories, ECHR and delegated powers memoranda.

1 April 2025

Link to Keeling Schedules added.

27 March 2025

Addition of ministerial correspondence category.

25 February 2025

First published.

Contents

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