Section 25 of the Police Act 1996

During a recent parliamentary debate on ‘Charitable and Community Events’, the issue of the way in which local police authorities invoke Section 25 of the Police Act 1996 arose.

Section 25 of the Police Act 1996 states that the chief officer of police of a police force may provide, at the request of any person, special police services at any premises or in any locality in the police area for which the force is maintained, subject to the payment to the police authority of charges on such scales as may be determined by that authority.

The power to levy charges under Section 25 of the 1996 Act is discretionary not mandatory. Special police services are not defined in the 1996 Act or elsewhere.

The issue was raised by Mr. Anthony Steen, the MP for Totnes. His concern was that, until recently, police had not exercised the power under Section 25 in relation to charitable and community events, but that many were now choosing to do so and as a consequence many events were not able to go ahead because such charges were pricing events out of existence. He also commented that the varying attitudes of police authorities throughout the country had created an unequal and unfair playing field, giving an example that the annual Notting Hill Carnival, whose policing costs runs into hundreds of thousands of pounds, escapes because the Metropolitan Police does not charge for such community events, but the organisers of other small charitable events in other police areas were charged.

Furthering his argument that charitable and community events should not be charged for policing costs, Mr Steen referred to a written ministerial answer given on November 29 2000 by then Home Office minister Mr. Charles Clarke, which stated that whilst police services are not defined in the 1996 Act or elsewhere, he would expect them to be services that meet some or all of the following criteria:

• They are not part of the general duty of the police to keep the peace and protect life and property.
• The service to be provided is on private land.
• The service to be provided is for a commercially organised event.

In response, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, Mr. Vernon Coaker, stated that in April 2005 the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) had issued guidance that sets out an approach to calculating the full economic cost of services provided and that ACPO had recommended that forces should seek to harmonise their methodologies with the guidance within the three years following its publication. The guidance can be found in full at http://www.acpo.police.uk/policies.asp