Please note this is NOT intended to be a comprehensive or
expert review of this Act of Parliament.
I would suggest that those with questions seek qualified legal advice. This short note reflects my lay impression of
the legislation from the narrow perspective of the impact on NHDPFs
The Crime and Policing Act 2026 is a massive and sprawling
piece of legislation. It amends several
existing Acts and creates new offences and powers. It will take some digesting. It touches on powers made available to Non
Home Department Police forces (NHDPFs).
In doing so it adds to the complex and messy landscape of what applies
to these forces and what doesn’t.
The Act does not have a blanket application to NHDPFs. Each part has to be examined separately in respect
of each force.
The first section amends the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime
and Policing Act 2014 to create so called ‘Respect’ orders. These orders can only be granted by a court
on the application of a relevant authority.
The definition of a relevant authority includes a chief officer of
police AND the Chief Constable of the British Transport Police (BTP). It excludes other NHDPFs and does not allow BTP
to apply for Respect Orders in the context of removing a person from their
home.
This Act’s biggest claim to fame is the bringing into effect
the earlier repeal of the last remaining provisions of the Vagrancy Act 1824. The 1824 Act was much used by BTP and the
various Parks constabularies. Its loss
will, I suggest, have a negative impact.
All the talk of ‘criminalising homelessness’ does not withstand an
examination of the content of the 1824 Act, or the way in which it has been
enforced in modern times.
Part 2 of the new Act is complicated and relates to the
enforcement of attempts to take down on line advertisements for unlawful
weapons. It is not yet in force. In the interpretation section the Ministry of
Defence Police (MDP) are expressly included.
The Act gives powers to allow the seizure of bladed weapons
on premises if a constable is lawfully on those premises. Therefore, it extends to any holder of the
office of constable if they are lawfully on premises as a constable (an
important requirement). There are
specific provisions for service police.
At the time of writing these sections (s30 and s31) are not yet in
force.
The Act creates an obligation for certain professionals to
report child sexual offences. These
reports must be made to Local Authorities or to ‘relevant’ police forces. In
all cases the relevant police force will be the local geographic force. (s85
and s86). However a constable of the BTP
or MDP who has an obligation to report will have met that obligation is they
follow their force policies. No mention
is made of other NHDPFs. These sections
are not yet in force.
S97 of the Act concerns the disclosure of information by
police for the purposes of preventing sexual offences. It allows for the Secretary of State to issue
guidance to Chief Officer of Police.
Unusually the Chief Officer of police descriptor explicitly includes the
Chiefs of BTP and MDP – but not other NHDPFs.
Part 10 of the Act tinkers further with the arrangements for
maintenance of public order. It also
extends certain powers to BTP and MDP (but not CNC) including in relation to
s60 of the Public Order Act 1986. But in
the case of BTP these minor amendments only apply to railway premises – BTP officers
still do not have the power to use these powers in the vicinity of, or the approaches
to, stations etc. See elsewhere in this
blog for a discussion about the so called ‘St Pancras Paradox’. The Act provided an opportunity to address
this problem once and for all but the opportunity has been missed.
S200 of the Act makes welcome provision for the anonymity of
Authorised Firearms Officers in certain circumstances during criminal cases. In this section the definition of ‘relevant
police force’ includes BTP MDP and CNC.
S212 makes provisions re the ‘barred lists’ for certain
NHDPFs and the NCA. I do not understand
why ‘barred’ officers could not be included in a single list. The MDP is not listed in this section because
in the case of MDP it is the Secretary of State who maintains a barred list and
who is listed in the Act. The relevant
schedule describes BTP, CNC etc as ‘special police forces’. This adds to the lexicon of descriptors for NHDPFs.
The legal provisions that surround, constrain and enable
NHDPFs are now so complex that it is unreasonable to think that any one
individual could fully understand the position
these forces operate from. A
recurrent theme of my blogs is that this complexity is not in the public
interest. It is time for the position
of NHDFs to be clarified and simplified.
Philip Trendall
July 2026
