Police protest powers, June 2022 to March 2025

Product Description

On June 28 2022, police forces were given additional powers to manage protests as part of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. This included amendments to sections 12 and 14 of the Public Order Act 1986, as well as the creation of a new section 14ZA. Along with these changes, a legal obligation was placed on the Home Secretary to lay in Parliament a report on the use of these powers.

From April 2023, data was requested retrospectively for the period of 28 June 2022 onwards under the Annual Data Requirement from the 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales and the British Transport Police on their use of protest powers under sections 12, 14 and 14ZA of the Public Order Act 1986 (as amended by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Act 2022).

The data in this release covers the period from 28 June 2022 (when the powers came into effect) up to 31 March 2025.

The information presented does not give an indication of the total number of processions and assemblies that have taken place, rather the data in this release includes only those where at least one of the additional protest powers was used.

Data was provided by all 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales and the British Transport Police, however, 2 forces (Metropolitan Police Service and West Yorkshire Police) were only able to provide data from April 2023, when the data collection was first introduced. In total, 17 forces (including the British Transport Police) had made use of the protest powers under sections 12, 14 or 14ZA of the Public Order Act 1986, and the remaining 27 forces confirmed that they had not used these protest powers in the specified period.