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Major restrictions to the right to protest in England and Wales were quietly brought into force on Monday.
The measures include a new offence of concealing your identity (e.g. with a face mask) in police-designated areas around protests, a ban on protesting outside the homes of public office-holders, including MPs, peers and candidates, and extra police powers to impose conditions on protests near places of worship.
The changes also add a duty for police to weigh the “cumulative disruption” from separate protests in the same area when setting conditions on demonstrations, as well as widening which officers can impose those conditions, to more junior ranks. Human rights groups pushed for this part of the legislation to be removed but were unsuccessful.
These provisions were passed by the Labour Government under the Crime and Policing Act 2026, large parts of which came into force on Monday (29 June).
As part of this, Government officials trumpeted the repeal of the Vagrancy Act, which criminalised rough sleeping. But other changes have gone less publicised.
A Home Office circular, published this week, sets out that the law makes it an offence to conceal your identity in a public place if it’s been ordered by a senior police officer. An inspector (or above) can designate an area as, effectively, mask-free for up to 24 hours. Those breaching a mask-ban face imprisonment up to one month, and/or a fine up to £1,000.
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It is also now an offence to possess a ‘pyrotechnic article’ – like a firework or flare – while taking part in a protest in a public place. Flares have been staples of protests for decades. Those using them now face fines up to £1,000 each.
Section 161 makes it an offence to climb on a specified memorial – including (specifically) the statue of Sir Winston Churchill in London’s Parliament Square, and the Holocaust Memorial Garden in Hyde Park, among 23 others. Breaking this law is punishable by up to three months’ imprisonment, a fine up to £1,000, or both.
The ban on protests outside ‘public office holders’ homes includes “all types of elected persons in England and Wales, peers in the House of Lords, and candidates to elected posts.” So protests outside council candidates’ homes are among demonstrations now banned, if they relate to “persuading the public office-holder of something that they should or should not do or have done.”
Those knowingly protesting outside elected officials’ or candidates’ homes now face the maximum term for summary offences, currently six months in prison, a fine up to £2,500, or both.
New Powers for Police
Changes to the Public Order Act 1986 enable conditions to be imposed on public processions, public assemblies and even one-person protests, where a senior police officer “reasonably believes” the protest is in the vicinity of a place of worship and may intimidate them enough to deter them from accessing the place of worship or performing religious activities there. Defying these orders would put marchers in breach of the Public Order Act 1986.
And there is now a duty on senior officers to take account of any “relevant cumulative disruption” in an area when considering whether “serious disruption to the life of the community” is occurring from protests. Police can then impose extra conditions on a protest, for example ordering a change of route.
Cumulative disruption can include “the significant delay to the delivery of a time-sensitive product to consumers of that product,” such as blocking food or beverage supplies.
Protesters breaching police conditions face fined up to £2,500, while organisers can face up to six months in prison (though this could soon rise to 51 weeks).
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Existing public order powers are now extended to the British Transport Police (BTP) and Ministry of Defence Police (MDP) – adding the ability for BTP to place conditions on protests at train stations, and to enable BTP and MDP officers to require individuals to remove face coverings.
Police also now have renewed powers to direct trespassers to leave land, and to seize vehicles. The amendment reduces the period during which a person directed to leave land must not return from twelve months to three months, following a High Court ruling against similar powers in 2024.
It also removes the need for a constable in uniform to issue a warning to someone using their vehicle in a “manner causing alarm, distress or annoyance.” The Home Office says it will make it easier and quicker for police to seize vehicles being used “anti-socially.” It is thought this could include vehicles displaying political messages.
‘Acts That Were Never Crimes Before’
Greenpeace UK’s deputy head of politics Reshima Sharma told Byline Times: “Taking part in protests is one of the few ways people can make their voices heard between elections and hold the powerful to account. It’s an act of hope that builds community and participation in our democracy. Which begs the question: why have so many Labour and Conservative home secretaries been desperate to ban this?”
Sharma said the Crime and Policing Act provides “yet more reasons” why a peaceful protester could find themselves on the wrong side of the law – from wearing a face covering to being somewhere a previous protest has recently taken place.
Greenpeace added a call to Andy Burnham to look again at the legislation: “Our next prime minister will have a clear decision to make: defend our democracy by allowing protest in all its forms to flourish, or continue down the path of despots and dictators.”
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Melissa Dring, human rights group Liberty’s head of policy and campaigns, told this outlet that successive governments “have made it harder for people to come together and speak out.”
“Acts that were never crimes before are now being criminalised, alongside increasingly extreme powers given to police to enforce them. Many people can only protest safely with a face covering, while restrictions on repeat protests strike at the heart of what makes many protests successful,” she said.
Dring called it “particularly disappointing” to see new protest restrictions coming into force while the Government’s own review of protest legislation is ongoing.
Liberty also plans to lobby the next PM – almost certainly Andy Burnham – to change course: “Roll back the most extreme protest restrictions, and work to protect our basic human right to make our voices heard which is a key feature of any healthy democracy.”
A spokesperson for Defend Our Juries, which has seen thousands of its activists arrested over the past two years for opposing the ban on Palestine Action, branded the changes a “chilling indictment” of the Labour Government, that its “primary response to climate breakdown and genocide is to silence and criminalise those peacefully calling for a change of course.”
“By going even further than the Tories with their crackdown on protest rights they reveal that far from protecting the public their main concern is to curry favour with their friends in the oil and arms industries and the Israeli lobby.”
The spokesperson called for Andy Burnham to “end the Labour party’s war on protest and dissent.”
“Irrespective of what anyone in Westminster does, Defend Our Juries will continue to organise mass actions to uphold international law and defend our democratic freedoms, knowing that the more the state tries to stop us, the faster our movement grows.”
This piece has been amended to note the protest measures apply to England and Wales.
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The Full List of Memorials It’s Now Illegal to Climb
- Arcade of Former Archbishops Palace, York (including the walls and railings under the arches of the Arcade)
- Arch of Remembrance, Leicester
- Cenotaph, Whitehall, London
- Charles Church, Plymouth (being the entire derelict structure of that church)
- Chatham Naval War Memorial
- Edith Cavell Memorial, St Martin’s Place, London
- Eleanor Cross, Sledmere
- Hall of Memory, Centenary Square, Birmingham
- Guards Memorial, Horse Guards Parade, London
- Liverpool Cenotaph
- Merchant Navy Memorial, Tower Hill, London
- Plymouth Naval War Memorial
- Port Sunlight War Memorial
- Portsmouth Naval War Memorial
- Preston War Memorial
- The Response, Newcastle upon Tyne
- Rochdale Cenotaph
- Royal Artillery Memorial, Hyde Park Corner, London
- Southampton Cenotaph
- Spalding War Memorial
- Statue of Captain Albert Ball, Nottingham Castle Gardens, Nottingham
- Town and County War Memorial, Northampton
- Wagoners’ Memorial, Sledmere
- Ely War Memorial (and the wall in which it is situated, extending east from the Almonry to the west end of No. 2 Fore Hill)
- Monument to the Women of World War II, Whitehall, London
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