Policy paper

Crime and Policing Act 2026: overarching factsheet

Updated 18 May 2026

What are we going to do?

We will:

• tackle the epidemic of serious violence, child sexual abuse and violence against women and girls that stains our society
• protect the public and our town centres from antisocial behaviour, retail crime and shop theft
• equip the police and others with the powers they need to combat antisocial behaviour, crime and terrorism
• rebuild public confidence in policing and the wider criminal justice system

How are we going to do it?

The act includes a range of measures, as follows:

Antisocial behaviour

1. Tackling anti-social behaviour by introducing respect orders.

2. Removing the need for police to issue a warning before seizing vehicles being used antisocially.

3. Strengthening existing antisocial behaviour closure powers by extending the power to issue closure notices to registered social housing providers, extending the duration of closure notices from 48 hours to 72 hours and enabling the Home Secretary to extend the maximum duration of closure orders.

4. Increasing the upper limit of fixed penalty notices for anti-social behaviour from £100 to £500, whilst requiring the Home Secretary to issue guidance on the proportionate issue of fixed penalty notices by local authorities and other authorised persons.

5. Providing a regulation-making power to the Secretary of State to mandate local authorities provide data on antisocial behaviour.

6. Introducing new offences of arranging or facilitating begging for gain and trespassing with intent to commit a criminal offence will ensure that police have the powers they need following the upcoming repeal of the Vagrancy Act 1824.

Fly tipping

7. Giving ministers the power to issue statutory guidance to councils in England on the enforcement of fly-tipping, including the use of their powers to seize vehicles.

8. Granting courts the power to add between 3 and 9 penalty points on the driving licences of individuals convicted of a fly-tipping offence involving the use of a vehicle.

Knife crime

9. Introducing personal liability measures on senior managers of online platforms who fail to take action on illegal content concerning knives and offensive weapons.

10. Introducing stricter age verification checks for the online sale and delivery of knives and crossbows, to stop lethal weapons ending up in the wrong hands; and requiring retailers to report bulk sales of bladed articles.

11. Creating a power to seize, retain and destroy bladed articles found on private property.

12. Increasing the maximum penalty for sale of dangerous weapons to under 18s; and creating a new criminal offence of possessing a bladed article with the intent to cause harm.

Retail crime

13. Introducing a new offence of assaulting a retail worker, giving workers in shops up and down the country the protection they need.

14. Repealing section 176 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 to make it clear that all shop theft is illegal and to remove the perception that those committing shop theft will escape punishment.

Hate crime

15. Extending existing racially and religiously aggravated offences to cover hostility related to disability, sex, sexual orientation and transgender identity.

16. Introducing new aggravated offences of threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour towards emergency workers, including where such conduct takes place in someone’s home.

Protection of children and vulnerable people

17. Introducing new offences of child criminal exploitation and internal concealment, alongside a civil preventative order designed to stop the abhorrent exploitation of children by criminals.

18. Making ‘cuckooing’ a specific offence, protecting the most vulnerable people whose homes are used by others to commit criminal activity, whilst also creating new offences of exposure and child abduction.

19. Supporting coroners’ investigations into the death of a child by strengthening the requirements around the preservation of a child’s social media data.

Child sexual abuse

20. Banning AI-models optimised to produce child sexual abuse material and extending existing law criminalising ’paedophile manuals’ to include material instructing how to use AI to generate child sexual abuse material.

21. Criminalising moderators and administrators of websites that host child sexual abuse material.

22. Granting Border Force officers the power to search the digital devices of individuals arriving in the UK for child sexual abuse material.

23. Implementing recommendations from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) including by introducing a new duty in England for adults working in relevant activities to report instances of child sexual abuse.

24. Introducing a new statutory aggravating factor covering grooming behaviour when sentencing specified sexual offences committed against those under 18.

25. Ensuring that individuals working in supervised roles will be subject to enhanced checks by the Disclosure and Barring Service.

26. Removing the three-year limitation period for child sexual abuse claims in the civil courts.

27. Giving effect to recommendation 1 of Baroness Casey’s National Audit on Group based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, by creating new offences covering rape and other penetrative sexual activity with a child under 16 by an adult.

Intimate image abuse

28. Creating new offences criminalising the taking or recording of intimate images without consent or reasonable belief of consent, and copying an intimate photograph or film shared temporarily, without consent or reasonable belief of consent.

29. Extending the time limit for prosecuting the summary-only offences for sharing, taking or recording an intimate image without consent or reasonable belief in consent, installing equipment with intent to enable a taking offence, and copying without consent an intimate photograph or film shared temporarily, to a period that is both within three years of the commission of the offence and within six months of the date when the prosecutor had sufficient evidence to prosecute.

30. Creating a new image deletion order which will be available following a conviction for an offence relating to intimate image abuse, breastfeeding voyeurism, or the sharing of semen-defaced images. Placing a duty on the courts to give reasons if they decide not to make an image deletion order, where it is available to them.

31. Criminalising the making, adapting, supplying or offering to supply a tool or service that can generate or facilitate the generation of purported intimate images of a person (so-called ‘nudification’ tools).

32. Making it a criminal offence to share a semen-defaced image of another person without their consent or reasonable belief in consent.

33. Placing new duties on online platforms to ensure that their systems and processes take down non-consensual intimate images as soon as reasonably practical and no later than 48 hours after receiving a report.

34. Conferring a duty on ministers to designate a registry (such as the Revenge Porn Helpline) for the purposes of providing information about non-consensual intimate images to providers of internet services. Following an evaluation, ministers will also have the power, through secondary legislation, to make further provision about the operation of the registry, including imposing duties on internet service providers to share intimate image hashes with the register.

Pornography

35. Criminalising the possession and publication of pornography portraying strangulation or suffocation.

36. Criminalising the possession and publication of pornography that depicts penetrative sex between persons who a reasonable person would think are related or are pretending to be related (so-called ‘incest porn’). This will include depictions of step-incest where one or both of the persons is, or is pretending to be, under-18.

37. Criminalising the possession and publication of pornography that portrays sexual activity between persons, where at least one person is, or is pretending to be, under-16 (that is, adults roleplaying as children).

38. Placing a duty on ministers to report to Parliament, within 12 months of Royal Assent, on the role of internet platforms in verifying the age and consent of persons appearing in pornographic content on their services and conferring regulation-making powers on ministers to give effect to the outcome of this work.

Violence against women and girls

39. Creating a new standalone administering a harmful substance (including by spiking) offence.

40. Giving victims of stalking the right to know the identity of their perpetrator, alongside strengthening stalking protection orders whilst issuing guidance to agencies on combatting stalking.

41. Conferring a power on the Home Secretary to issue guidance to public authorities about tackling ‘honour’-based abuse.

42. Introducing a disregard and pardons scheme for individuals who received convictions or cautions for the offence of persistently soliciting or loitering in public for the purposes of prosecution whilst under 18.

Sexual offences

43. Expanding the scope of the offence of sexual penetration of a corpse, to additionally criminalise non-penetrative sexual touching of a corpse with a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment, and increasing the maximum penalty for sexual penetration of a corpse from two years’ imprisonment to seven years’ imprisonment.

44. Replacing the offence of ‘intercourse with an animal’ with a broader offence of ‘sexual activity with an animal’ to cover a wider range of sexual activity with animals and sexual activity with dead animals.

Management of offenders

45. Reforming the ability of the police to manage registered sex offenders, including restricting their ability to change their name where there is a risk of sexual harm.

46. Giving probation officers the power to polygraph test more serious offenders who have committed sexual or terrorism motivated crimes.

47. Placing a new duty on individuals serving a sentence in the community and who are supervised by probation or a youth offending team to inform their responsible officer if they change their name, use a different name (for example, an alias) or change their contact information.

48. Conferring powers on the Home Secretary to make regulations establishing notification requirements for individuals cautioned or convicted of specified child cruelty offences.

AI harms

49. Introducing a power for the Technology Secretary to make regulations to bring unregulated AI chatbots into scope of the Online Safety Act 2023 and to subject them to duties to minimise or mitigate the risks of harm to UK users from illegal AI generated content and from the use of AI services for the commission or facilitation of priority offences.

Serious crime

50. Banning electronic devices used in vehicle theft.

51. Strengthening the tools available to law enforcement agencies to tackle fraud and economic crime, including prohibiting possession and supply of ‘SIM farms’ with no legitimate purpose.

52. Reforming the confiscation powers used to strip convicted criminals of their proceeds of crime and introducing cost protections for law enforcement agencies to protect them from the risk of adverse costs when investigating kleptocrats and high-net worth individuals and corporations.

53. Reforming the identification doctrine to strengthen the ability to apply corporate criminal liability to the makeup of modern corporations, particularly large complex structures.

Public order

54. Banning the deliberate use of face coverings to conceal a person’s identity during a protest, and banning the possession of fireworks, flares and other pyrotechnics at protests.

55. Criminalising the climbing of specified war and other memorials of national significance, making it clear that such disrespectful behaviour is unacceptable.

56. Strengthening the powers of the police to protect places of worship, such as synagogues, mosques, churches and other places of worship from intimidating levels of disruption caused by protest activity.

57. Amending sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act 1986 to explicitly require a senior police officer to take account of the cumulative impact of frequent protests on local areas when deciding to place conditions on a protest.

58. Introducing new powers to protect MPs and other public officer holders from protests outside their homes.

Police powers

59. Creating a new targeted power for the police to enter premises to search for and seize electronically tracked stolen goods, ranging from mobile phones to stolen vehicles and agricultural machinery.

60. Expanding the lawful purposes by which law enforcement agencies can access the DVLA driver licence records.

61. Creating a power for law enforcement agencies to extract information from online accounts as part of their investigations including into immigration crime, sexual abuse cases, and to protect UK national security and our borders.

62. Expanding police powers to drug test more suspects on arrest, helping direct more drug users into treatment and away from drugs.

63. Repealing the code of practice governing the collection of non-crime hate incidents, following the College of Policing’s review.

64. Extending the pool of persons to whom a foreign national conditional caution (that is, leaving the UK as an alternative to prosecution) may be given with a view to securing the removal of more foreign nationals who commit crime.

Policing

65. Reforming the Independent Officer of Police Conduct’s investigative processes and giving chief officers of police the right to appeal the result of misconduct boards to the Police Appeals Tribunal.

66. Introducing a presumption of anonymity for firearm officers up to the point of sentence, if they are charged with a criminal offence after discharging their firearm in the course of official duties.

67. Introducing barred and advisory lists for the National Crime Agency, British Transport Police, Civil Nuclear Constabulary and Ministry of Defence Police to prevent officers from those forces dismissed, including for gross misconduct being re-employed by another force.

68. Conferring a power on the Secretary of State to designate and give directions to critical police undertakings calculated to promote the efficiency and effectiveness of the police in order to drive efficiency savings and prepare for the creation of the National Police Service.

Counter-terrorism and national security

69. Introducing youth diversion orders to divert young people away from terrorism-related activity.

70. Broadening the definition of weapons in the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Act 2011 (and associated state threats prevention and investigation measures) to limit the access to weapons and bladed articles of individuals subject to such measures.

71. Applying the offence of wearing, carrying or displaying articles that support a proscribed organisation to conduct that takes place in prisons. The act also amends seizure powers for such articles to allow police to seize articles without the need for them to be used in criminal proceedings.

72. Introducing a new power for the police, or the Secretary of State, to apply to the courts to permit specific counter-terrorism risk management tools to be applied to a small number of historic offenders.

73. Rectify an inconsistency which has been identified in the way a specific sentence in Northern Ireland (the terrorism sentence with a fixed licence period) can be handed down compared with the equivalent sentence in England and Wales.

74. Ensuring consistency between the offence of breaching a foreign travel restriction order and other terrorism offences covered by the Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Act 2020.

International cooperation

75. Granting ministers a power to implement international law enforcement information-sharing agreements.

76. Amending the provisions in the Extradition Act 2003 regarding the entitlement to retrial to ensure compatibility between UK domestic legislation and the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement.

Abortion

77. Disapplying the criminal offences related to abortion in respect of a woman acting in relation to her own pregnancy at any gestation. The relevant offences are at sections 58 (administering drugs or using instruments to procure an abortion) and 59 (procuring drugs etc to cause abortion) of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and section 1 of the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929.

78. Pardoning women (living or deceased) previously convicted of or cautioned for a criminal offence related to abortion when acting in relation to her own pregnancy. Providing for relevant data controllers to delete from relevant official records any details of which they are aware of such a conviction or caution, or a related arrest or investigation, as far as it is reasonably practicable to make the deletion.

Background and geographical scope

• The Crime and Policing Act supports the delivery of the government’s Safer Streets Mission to halve knife crime and violence against women and girls in a decade and increase public confidence in policing and the wider criminal justice system. It implements key manifesto commitments, such as introducing respect orders and standalone offences of assaulting a retail worker and spiking. It will help to rebuild the public’s confidence in policing, by equipping the police with more powers to respond quickly to criminal activity, whilst reforming the police accountability system.

Will these measures apply across the United Kingdom?

• Subject to limited exceptions, all the provisions in the act extend and apply to England and Wales. Certain provisions also extend and apply to Scotland and Northern Ireland. The provisions in the act relate to a mixture of devolved and reserved or excepted matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.