Change made: Updated to reflect enactment of the bill.
Contents
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Ministerial correspondence
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Bill
factsheets
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Impact
assessments
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ECHR
Memoranda
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Keeling Schedules
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Delegated powers memoranda
The Crime and Policing Bill 2025 received Royal Assent on 29
April 2026 and is now the Crime and Policing Act 2026.
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:
1. 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
2. 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
3. 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
4. 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
5. 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
6. 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
Bill factsheets
Impact assessments
ECHR Memoranda
Keeling Schedules
Delegated powers memoranda
