Victims were five days from a new right to challenge a rejected anti-social behaviour case review when the Home Office quietly cancelled it. Every enforcement power in the same package still starts on 26 October as planned.

By Kevin Yeandel

Published 24 October 2026 at 03:42

4/52 documented mistakes in this teardownHow ratings work

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

The Home Office building at 2 Marsham Street, Westminster, London. — The Home Office, 2 Marsham Street, Westminster, 3 September 2010. Photo: Steph Gray / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

In short. The Crime and Policing Act 2026 (Commencement No. 3 and Saving Provisions) Regulations 2026 set 26 October 2026 as the start date for nine provisions, including Respect Orders, youth and housing injunctions, and a new Local Policing Body Review that lets victims escalate a rejected or unsatisfactory anti-social behaviour case review to their Police and Crime Commissioner [1]. A one-line amending instrument, made 21 October 2026, five days before that date, removes only the Local Policing Body Review from the list [2]. The other eight provisions, including every new enforcement power, are unaffected and still start on 26 October. No reason is given in either instrument, and no new date has been set. Two documented mistakes: four stars.

Picked from this week's legislation.gov.uk feed: a five-day-notice reversal on a named, published commencement date, confirmed live on the primary legislative record rather than inferred from press coverage. It scores on three criteria: the scale of people affected (every victim of persistent anti-social behaviour in England and Wales who might seek a case review), the fact that it amends a document already tracked on this site in connection with the Crime and Policing Act's wider commencement programme, and an undefined timetable for when the missing piece will arrive. This is a Tier 2 structured teardown, built from the two commencement instruments' own text and the Home Office's own practitioner guidance for the measure being pulled.

What the Local Policing Body Review was meant to do

Section 6 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026 inserts a new section 104A into the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, creating the Local Policing Body Review [3]. Under the existing system, a victim of persistent anti-social behaviour can apply for an ASB case review, commonly known as the community trigger, once a locally set threshold of complaints is met; agencies including the council, police and social housing providers must then carry out a multi-agency review [4]. Each area sets its own threshold, and outcomes vary sharply: council-published 2026 figures range from Gravesham recording 2 of 13 applications meeting the threshold to South Oxfordshire's 3 of 3.

Section 104A gives victims a second tier: if the threshold is ruled not met, or the victim is dissatisfied with how the review was carried out, they can apply to the local policing body, which in most of England and Wales is the Police and Crime Commissioner, for a further review [3]. The local policing body must then publish its own review procedures and a point of contact, decide whether the original threshold was correctly applied, and report the outcome and any recommendations back to the victim [3].

The Home Office's own 150-page statutory guidance for frontline professionals, revised for October 2026 and published alongside the commencement date, does not undersell it: "This is an important new safeguard that aims to ensure ASB victims' concerns have been properly considered" and "the LPB Review is also intended to provide accountability and oversight of the agencies involved in the ASB Case Review process" [5]. Twelve pages of that guidance (pages 26 to 37) set out exactly how Police and Crime Commissioners should run the new review, including a statutory duty to "promote awareness" of it so victims who have never heard of the community trigger know the escalation route exists [5].

The claim, tested

The claim	What we found	Verdict
The No. 3 Regulations list nine provisions, including the Local Policing Body Review, as coming into force together on 26 October 2026: "The following provisions of the 2026 Act come into force on 26th October 2026" [1]	The amending Regulations, made 21 October 2026, state plainly: "Regulation 2 of these Regulations removes regulation 4(f) and (i) from the No. 3 Regulations, meaning that section 6 of and Schedule 3 to the Act will not come into force on 26th October 2026" [2]	One provision out of nine, and specifically the victim-escalation one, has been quietly pulled from a package otherwise proceeding on schedule
The amending instrument's own Explanatory Note states: "These provisions will be brought into force at a future date" [2]	No future date appears anywhere in the instrument. The Home Office's own guidance page, updated two days before this document was checked, says the same thing in different words: "We'll share further updates when a commencement date for the LPB review is agreed" [6]	Two government publications confirm the same open-ended delay in the same week; neither gives a reason or a date
The Home Office's guidance page introduces its own 150-page document as "Introduction to guidance which takes effect on 26 October 2026" [6]	The same page's update log, posted the same day, states: "The local policing body (LPB) review chapter will not take effect on 26 October" [6]	The department's own page describes its guidance as taking effect on a date that one of its three main chapters explicitly will not

No reason, and no sign the rest of the package has slowed

Nothing in either instrument explains why the Local Policing Body Review specifically needed more time. The amending Regulations' own assessment of impact is narrow and accurate as far as it goes: "It is not envisaged that this amending instrument will have an impact, or at least no significant impact, on the private, voluntary or public sector" [2]. That sentence is about the administrative cost of writing a one-line amendment, not about the practical effect of withdrawing, for now, the only route victims had to challenge a council or police force that refuses to review a case.

The rest of the 26 October package is unaffected. Respect Orders, the modernised successor to the ASB order, still commence that day, along with youth and housing injunctions, fixed penalty notices, and the power for registered social housing providers to close premises without first obtaining a court order [1]. Every power that lets the state act against a person behaving anti-socially proceeds on schedule. The one duty that makes a council or police force answerable to the victim when they get it wrong is the piece held back.

Credit where due

The Home Office did not let this slip out quietly on the day itself. Its guidance page was updated on 23 October 2026, three days before the original start date and before any journalist or campaigner had to go looking for it, with a plain statement that the chapter would not take effect and a commitment to update again once a date is agreed [6]. The other eight provisions in the same package, including the headline Respect Order, are going ahead as planned rather than being swept into the same delay, so this is a targeted pause on one mechanism, not a stealth rollback of the wider reform.

Verdict

Four stars, from two documented mistakes. The substance of the Local Policing Body Review, a genuine second-tier check on local agencies that the department's own guidance calls an accountability and oversight measure, is sound and still on the books. What is missing is any public account of why, with five days' notice, it alone was pulled from a commencement date that eight other provisions are still meeting, and any date for when it will actually arrive.

The star score counts two documented mistakes: (1) the Crime and Policing Act 2026 (Commencement No. 3 and Saving Provisions) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 remove the Local Policing Body Review from the 26 October 2026 commencement date with no reason given and no replacement date set, while every enforcement power in the same package proceeds unaffected; and (2) the Home Office's own guidance page describes its revised 150-page guidance as taking effect on 26 October 2026 while its own update log, published the same week, states that the Local Policing Body Review chapter specifically will not. One fall in the 1 to 3 band: four stars; the bands are on the ratings page. Checked directly against both commencement instruments on legislation.gov.uk, section 6 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026, the Home Office's Antisocial behaviour powers guidance page and its October 2026 statutory guidance PDF, and the current GOV.UK community trigger guidance, fetched 24 October 2026. The document is tracked in the Daily Register; a commencement order setting a new date for the Local Policing Body Review will get a diff entry.

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