Impact assessment

Economic note 1035: disregard scheme (accessible)

Updated 27 October 2026

Economic Note Number: HO EN 1035

Title of regulatory proposal: Disregard scheme for the offence of persistently loitering or soliciting for the purposes of prostitution, for those aged under 18 years at the point of caution or conviction.

Lead Department/Agency: The Home Office

Expected date of implementation: April 2026

Origin: Domestic

Date: 10/11/2025

Lead Departmental Contact: CrimeandPolicingBillTeam@homeoffice.gov.uk

Departmental Assessment: GREEN

Rationale for intervention, objectives and intended effects

The disregard scheme clears the records of people who were under 18 years old when they were cautioned or convicted for loitering or soliciting for prostitution under section 1 of the Street Offences Act 1959. The Serious Crime Act 2015 (SCA 2015) raised the minimum age for this offence to 18 years of age and updated the law to recognise these cases as forms of child sexual exploitation rather than ‘child prostitution’ or ‘child pornography’. The purpose of the scheme is to help people who were sexually exploited as children by removing criminal record barriers that may stop them getting a job or moving on with their lives.

Policy options (including alternatives to regulation)

Option 0: – ‘Do-nothing’.

Option 1: – Implement a disregard scheme to repeal convictions/cautions issued to those under 18 years old for the offence in section 1 of the Street Offences Act 1959 (loitering or soliciting for the purposes of prostitution). This is the government’s preferred option.

Costs and benefit summary

A fully monetised appraisal has not been possible due to an absence of applicable and reliable data. Non-monetised costs include increased administration costs and low familiarisation costs. One of the core non-monetised benefits of the scheme is improved employment prospects for those impacted by the disregard process.

Total Cost (£m PV)	Transition Cost (£m Constant)	Cost to Business (£m PV)
N/A	N/A	N/A

Total Benefit (£m PV)	NPSV (£m PV)	BPNV (£m PV)	EANDCB (£m PV)
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

Price Base Year	PV Base Year	Appraisal period (Years)	Transition period (Years)
2026/27	2026/27	10	N/A

Departmental sign-off (SCS): Mya Eastwood Date: 11/03/2026

Chief Economist sign-off: Tim Laken Date: 27/04/2026

Better Regulation Unit sign-off: Emma Kirk Date: 28/04/2026

Evidence Base

A. Policy objectives and intended effects

1. Section 1 of the Street Offences Act 1959 introduced the offence of loitering or soliciting in public for the purposes of prostitution (“the section 1 offence”).The offence was amended in Section 68 (7) of the Serious Crime Act 2015 (“SCA 2015”), so that it could no longer be committed by an individual of any age but could instead only be committed by an individual aged 18 years or over.

2. Section 68 also amended the headings of the ‘child prostitution’ and ‘child pornography’ offences in the Sexual Offences Act 2003 to frame any procurement of sex from an individual aged under 18 years as the ‘sexual exploitation of children’. This change was made to reflect the government’s position that children who are observed to be loitering in public to sell sex should be recognised as the victims of sexual exploitation.

3. This policy aims to support the cohort of individuals who, prior to 2015, were criminalised when they should have been recognised as victims of child sexual exploitation. It will pardon and disregard cautions and convictions issued to them to remove the potential barriers to employment and psychological recovery. This will address in part recommendation 3 of the National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, to ‘review the criminal convictions of victims of child sexual exploitation and quash any convictions where the government finds victims were criminalised instead of protected’.^{[footnote 1]}

4. This will be delivered through an amendment to the Crime and Policing Act 2026, which will amend the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 to disregard relevant cautions and convictions and the Policing and Crime Act 2017 to pardon them.

5. The Same-Sex Disregard Scheme is a government legal framework in which those with a historical conviction, caution, warning or reprimand for consensual same-sex sexual activity can apply for the Home Office to have this record permanently deleted.^{[footnote 2]} Unlike this existing disregard scheme, the new disregard scheme for the offence of ‘persistently loitering or soliciting for the purposes of prostitution, for those aged under 18 years at the point of caution or conviction’ will operate automatically – meaning individuals will not need to apply to the Home Office for their records to be assessed and then deleted.

6. Instead, the Home Office will write to relevant data controllers to inform them of their duty to delete from relevant official records, as soon as reasonably practicable given resource requirements, any record of convictions or cautions issued to an individual under 18 years of age for the section 1 offence.

B. Policy options considered, including alternatives to regulation

Option 0: ‘Do-nothing’

7. This option would result in the continued eligibility for disclosure of criminal records in respect of individuals who were under 18 years old when they were convicted of, or cautioned for, the section 1 offence - individuals who, according to section 68 of the SCA 2015, were sexually exploited as children. Disclosure – or the risk of it – will continue to negatively impact individuals with such records, particularly with regard to their employment opportunities and wellbeing.

Option 1: A disregard scheme for the offence of loitering or soliciting for the purposes of prostitution, for those under 18 years old at the point of caution or conviction.

8. The option of legislating to establish a disregards scheme for those convicted of loitering or soliciting for the purposes of prostitution (contrary to section 1 of the Street Offences Act 1959). This option logically flows from section 68 of the SCA 2015, which repealed the section 1 offence when committed by individuals under 18 years old and recognised children involved in prostitution as victims of child sexual exploitation. This option nullifies the criminal records of sexually exploited children convicted of, or cautioned for, on-street prostitution. It aims to improve the employment prospects and wellbeing of those individuals. Option 1 is the government’s preferred option.

Non-regulatory options

9. There are no viable non-regulatory options that would meet the objectives of this policy. The relevant data controllers can only be compelled to delete or mark as disregarded criminal records if directed to do so by the Home Office, and if this is set out in primary legislation.

C. Past evaluations and rationale for government intervention

10. This government intervention follows several calls to disregard convictions and cautions issued to individuals aged under 18 years, who have been victims of sexual exploitation. Firstly, the National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse^{[footnote 3]} recommended the government ‘review[s] the criminal convictions of victims of child sexual exploitation and quash[es] any convictions where the government finds victims were criminalised instead of protected’.

11. The government has committed in the ‘Freedom from violence and abuse: a cross-government strategy’ (published on 18 December 2025)^{[footnote 4]} to review all prostitution laws to ensure that women and girls are protected from exploitation. Disregarding convictions and cautions issued to those under 18 years old for the section 1 offence is one early aspect of the government’s implementation of that commitment. Furthermore, as outlined in the benefits section below, the introduction of this disregard scheme could also provide wider societal benefits including improved psychological recovery and employment prospects for those cautioned/convicted who would now be considered victims.

D. Appraisal

General assumptions and data

12. While efforts have been made to understand the impacts of the preferred option on all affected groups, costs and benefits are presented in a non-monetised format. This is due to an absence of available data on the new disregard process, and an expected low impact of the legislation as monetary costs and benefits are assumed to be limited.

13. The exact volume of individuals impacted by this legislation is unknown. Indicative, internal analysis suggests that the potential volumes of under-18s convicted or cautioned of the specified solicitation offence, that would require disregarding, would be manageable within available resource. It has not been possible to develop estimates for the total number of individuals within this cohort back to the implementation of the Act in 1959 due to a lack of applicable data.

14. If the legislation is passed, the Secretary of State for the Home Department (Home Secretary) will commission a £50,000 grant for the ACRO Criminal Records Office (ACRO) to deliver the Disregard Scheme for those under 18 cautioned or convicted of loitering or soliciting for the purposes of prostitution. The grant will support the identification, disregard, and deletion of relevant records for the specified offence. The funding will enable ACRO to establish governance and oversight arrangements for the Scheme, undertake data interrogation and record matching to identify potentially eligible cautions and convictions, and coordinate activity across PCC areas, HMCTS, and other stakeholders to delete records, where possible, or mark as disregarded and not for passing onwards if deletion is not possible.

15.The majority of historical records (pre-1995) have been uploaded to the Police National Computer (PNC) (approx. five million), yet a proportion of historical records are still held on microfiche films in warehouses across England and Wales (approx. 900.000). There is uncertainty around whether the remaining general microfiche records will be uploaded to the PNC and timeframes for this project. The grant is for 2026/27 and will cover the entire implementation phase of the Scheme.

16. The dispersal of the £50,000 funding to ACRO, a police body, via a Home Office commissioned grant is determined to be an economic transfer, rather than a cost. This is because the funding is passing between government bodies in return for the same value of output; the grant valuation does not change the Net Present Social Value (NPSV) of the policy.

17. Data controllers will be required to delete the records as soon as reasonably practical considering resource requirements and relevant personnel availability. This is likely to be an efficient process for those offenders already transferred from microfiche to the PNC

Non-Monetised Costs

18. Administration costs. The Home Office will require data controllers to delete official records for individuals eligible for the disregard scheme. The administration costs and staff time required to process the deletion of these records for these agencies are expected to be low, most prominently for records held on the PNC. The deletion process is expected to be efficient for records on the PNC. Records still held on microfiche film in warehouses across England and Wales are expected to take longer to disregard; this is likely to be a manual process in which notes will be left on specific records to ensure the relevant cautions and convictions are disregarded in future.

19. The cautions and convictions on microfiche will only be marked as disregarded if the individual’s record comes to the police’s notice as a result of routine enquiries, such as fulfilling a DBS check, or if the individual writes to the data controller. It has not been possible to monetise the cost of this additional administration resource due to an absence of applicable data.

30. Familiarisation costs. The scheme would involve different stakeholders, who own the data that must be deleted and who will need to be briefed of the duty placed upon them to delete in-scope records. This could include local chief constables, British Transport Police, Department for Transport, Service Police, Ministry of Defence, HMCTS and DBS. The familiarisation cost has not been monetised in this context due to an expected low volume of relevant offenders and uncertainty around the volumes required to familiarise themselves with any potential guidance around the scheme. The Home Office will also be required to draft non-statutory guidance for the main stakeholders which will be covered by the ACRO grant.

Benefits

21. Due to an absence of available data, this economic note provides only qualitative assessment of the possible benefits of the proposed legislation.

22. Psychological recovery. This proposed disregard scheme aims to remove a barrier to psychological recovery for individuals who were criminalised for on-street prostitution while under 18 years old, but who would now be recognised as victims of child sexual exploitation. Pardoning and disregarding convictions and cautions may have a symbolic meaning for individuals affected and may reduce fears that their history of exploitation will be disclosed further.

23. Improved employment prospects. Studies collecting qualitative evidence suggest that women who have been convicted or cautioned as children for offences under the section 1 offence have had difficulties in their career progression.^{[footnote 5]} Enhanced checks where both spent and unspent convictions must be disclosed tend to be more common in sectors such as healthcare and education. These are occupations were generally performed by women according to the relevant data (77% of jobs in health and social work, and 70% in education).^{[footnote 6]} Women affected by this offence may have struggled to develop their career or find work in their desired sector.

24. Qualitative research has found that those affected are dissatisfied in current jobs and lack the confidence to attempt applying for desired employment.^{[footnote 7]} If affected individuals no longer had these offences on their criminal record due to the proposed disregard scheme, they could be encouraged to apply for more favoured employment with enhanced DBS checks. This will aim to improve their confidence and expand career prospects.

25. This may result in positive wider economy growth impacts within the population of those who were convicted of this offence such as increased overall labour force productivity, with people who would have had criminal records in the counterfactual able to be more productive at work or join the workforce entirely. However, it is not possible to quantitively estimate the scale of this prospective impact due to the absence of applicable data.

NPSV, BNPV and EANDCB

26. It has not been possible to monetise the Net Present Social Value (NPSV) of this measure due to a lack of applicable data required to develop monetary impact estimates and expected low volumes. The proposed impact of the disregard scheme is primarily symbolic for victims, with limited scope to accurately monetise the impact of a cleared record linked to the solicitation offence. Furthermore, the administrative burden of this disregard scheme is expected to be less significant compared to the previous same-sex disregard scheme as applicable records will be automatically deleted. There is no proposed impact of the measure on business.

E. Wider impacts

27. The measure is concentrated on bringing justice to those who may feel they wrongfully have convictions/cautions on their criminal records, with the main impacts focused on the authority systems who oversee the process. No wider impacts have been identified that have not been included in previous sections of the document.

F. Sensitivity

28. None of the measures in this Economic Note are regulatory provisions as defined under the Better Regulation Framework. The equivalent annual net direct costs to the public sector are less than +/- £20 million, so an Impact Assessment is not required. This Economic Note has been produced instead and contains proportionate analysis outlining the main costs, benefits, and NPSV calculations.

G. Risks

29. It has not been possible to monetise prospective costs to other departments such as the police and courts as part of the proposed disregard scheme application process due to an absence of granular data. Likewise, it has not been possible to monetise any benefits. Due to an absence of historical offence data, the total volume of offenders under the age of 18 years cautioned or convicted under section 1 of the Street Offences Act 1959 has been estimated using the only existing data available between 1995 and 2015.

30. This introduces uncertainty into the estimated total number of affected individuals, leading to uncertainty in the estimated total volume of offenders. This may impact the potential administrative costs of the proposed legislation.

H. Annex

Mandatory specific impact test - Statutory Equalities Duties Complete

Under limb 1, this policy will directly discriminate based on age, as it will apply to individuals who were issued a conviction or caution for a specific offence while under the age of 18. However, this can be objectively justified as the measure aims to serve the legitimate purpose of enabling victims of child sexual exploitation to recover. The measure is likely to disproportionately impact women, as higher numbers of women have been issued convictions and cautions for the offence in question. Again, this can be objectively justified as the measure serves the legitimate purpose of enabling victims of sexual exploitation to recover.

In addition, it is estimated that this measure would positively benefit groups that are more likely to be sexually exploited. Research commissioned by the Home Office in 2019 showed that people from specific vulnerable groups may be more likely to be driven to prostitution due to financial difficulties. This included some protected characteristics, for example where people incurred extra costs due to gender transitions, and healthcare needs for disabilities.

Under limb 2, it is estimated that this measure could advance equality of opportunity for women who are more likely to be sexually exploited.

The Home Office found no evidence under limb 3. There is no evidence of prejudice or feelings of distrust between different groups of people in this field, so there is no need to encourage good relations through this measure.

The SRO has agreed these findings.

1. National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (accessible) - GOV.UK: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-audit-on-group-based-child-sexual-exploitation-and-abuse/national-audit-on-group-based-child-sexual-exploitation-and-abuse-accessible ↩

2. Apply to remove a conviction for same-sex sexual activity - GOV.UK: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/apply-to-remove-a-conviction-for-gay-sex-offences ↩

3. National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (accessible) - GOV.UK: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-audit-on-group-based-child-sexual-exploitation-and-abuse/national-audit-on-group-based-child-sexual-exploitation-and-abuse-accessible ↩

4. Freedom from violence and abuse: a cross-government strategy - GOV.UK: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/freedom-from-violence-and-abuse-a-cross-government-strategy ↩

5. Working it Out - Improving employment opportunities for women with criminal convictions: https://prisonreformtrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/old_files/Documents/Women/workingitout220120_final.pdf ↩

6. House of Commons (2025) Women and the UK economy, available at: https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN06838#fullreport ↩

7. “I’m no criminal.”  Examining the impact of prostitution-specific criminal records on women seeking to exit prostitution: https://niaendingviolence.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Im_No_Criminal.pdf ↩