Labour to overhaul non-crime hate incident rules

Crime / Tue 31st Mar 2026 at 07:58am

THE government is to change when police forces in England and Wales record non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs), in a bid to end the policing of “everyday arguments” reports the BBC.

New Home Office guidance will say that forces should only log incidents that are potentially “relevant to policing”.

It comes after a review by police chiefs found the system, developed in the mid-2000s, had increasingly seen officers drawn into policing debates on social media.

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c80m7xyl0xgo

2 Comments for Labour to overhaul non-crime hate incident rules:

David Forman

2026-03-31 09:32:23

This is all stemmed from a Court of Appeal case, Harry Miller versus The College of Policing in 2021. There were inconsistencies in the hate crime legislation. For instance, His Majesty's Inspectorates say: "Hate crime recording legislation refers to section 28(5) of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 when defining religion or religious belief. This doesn’t include any of the other beliefs beyond those that are religious. Therefore, it is another example of inconsistencies in hate crime legislation and NCHI guidance when compared with the Equality Act 2010." See HMI article at https://hmicfrs.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/publication-html/activism-and-impartiality-in-policing/ Court of Appeal case at https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Miller-v-College-of-Policing-judgment-201221.pdf

David Forman

2026-03-31 09:51:36

Mr Harry Miller challenged The College of Policing in the Court of Appeal on its Hate Crime Operational Guidance in 2021. Miller's case was centred on the "requirement of perception based recording, and in particular, the requirement in Section 6.3 that a hate incident (defined in Section 6.1) must be recorded as such “irrespective of whether there is any evidence to identify the hate element."" Hence why the Tories got all fired up and now the Labour government prove the Tories can pass legislation without winning an election.