Crime and Policing Bill 2025

The newly published Crime and Policing Bill has had its second reading in the House of Commons and the government have produced a series of factsheets. Some of these will be of particular interest to schools, especially Designated Safeguarding Leads (DSLs) and those with responsibility for the school’s Single Central Record (SCR).

The factsheet on Child Criminal Exploitation and ‘Cuckooing’, tells us a new standalone offence has been created that allows the prosecution of adults committing child criminal exploitation. Children being coerced and manipulated by adults into committing crimes is a type of child abuse and the law will now reflect this. We hope that this will help professionals to understand and work to prevent children being drawn into criminal activity and dissuade adults from this type of child abuse.

The bill introduces a new offence of possession of a knife or offensive weapon in public or private with intent to use unlawful violence. This offence will help to bridge the gap between being in possession of a knife in public – or on school premises – and it being used to threaten or harm anyone. It will target those who equip themselves with bladed articles with the intention to use violence, or cause a person to believe violence will be used against them or another, or, to cause serious unlawful damage, before they have the chance to carry out any attack on the intended victim or property. More information can be found on the factsheet Knife Crime.

A new criminal offence will be introduced that criminalises AI models that have been optimised to create child sexual abuse material. For more information on this, see the factsheet on Child Sexual Abuse Material. The UK is the first country in the world to create new AI sexual abuse offences to protect children. There will also be the introduction of a specific offence for predators who run websites designed for paedophiles to share content.

A new Youth Diversion Order (YDO) will be introduced in this bill to disrupt young people involved in terrorist offending at an earlier stage and divert them from the wider criminal justice system, including prosecution. More information on this can be found on the factsheet, Counter-terrorism and National Security.

This bill will also implement some of the key recommendations from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, including a new duty to report. It will also create a new criminal offence of engaging in conduct which is intended to bring about the result that a report required under the duty is not made. This will hopefully start to tackle some of the long-standing issues with under reported child sexual abuse. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse found that many victims had made disclosures to a responsible adult, but no further action was taken, no official report was made, and often the perpetrator continued to have access to children. There is also the addition of grooming being an aggravating factor.

DBS checks

Due to one of the recommendations from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, there will be some changes to DBS checks. This includes removing the exemption of ‘supervision’ in the definition of regulated activity, so that everyone in relevant roles will be eligible for the highest level of criminal record check, regardless of whether they are working under supervision. Schools will now be able to find out whether somebody working or volunteering closely and frequently with children on a supervised basis is on the DBS’s children’s barred list. This is something which most schools will agree is necessary as anyone who becomes a trusted adult in their setting, even if they are supervised, should be checked in the same way as other staff. This gives us an additional layer of security against predators trying to volunteer in a supervised capacity to build relationships with our pupils.

There are also new measures being taken to address stalking, for more information on this the Reducing Violence Against Women and Girls factsheet is available.

I think you’ll agree that there is a lot in this bill which will influence the way we tackle certain issues, discuss them as part of our PHSE and RSE curriculums, and disseminate the information through staff training. The introduction of any new law that supports us to reduce harm to children is good news, but we will wait and see how this bill progresses through parliament and what the final bill will cover.