The Anti-social Behaviour (Provision of Information) Regulations 2026 create a new statutory reporting duty for local authorities in England and Wales. The instrument was made on 12 October 2026, laid before Parliament on 14 October 2026 and, on the face of regulation 1, is due to come into force 21 days later on 4 November 2026. It was signed by Sarah Jones, Minister of State at the Home Office. According to the Regulations, the duty is made under section 105A of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, a power inserted by the Crime and Policing Act 2026. For the purposes of this instrument, the bodies covered are local authorities within the section 20 definition in the 2014 Act.
Regulation 3 requires each specified authority to provide the Secretary of State with the information listed in the Schedule for every relevant reporting period. The first return must cover the six months beginning on commencement, with each later return covering successive six-month periods. This turns anti-social behaviour reporting into a formal statutory return rather than a loose management dataset. The Explanatory Note also states that section 105A(3) allows authorities to collect, obtain, create, retain and process information in order to comply. In practice, that gives central government a clear legal basis to expect new recording arrangements where existing systems do not yet hold the required fields.
The first reporting item is a volume measure: the number of anti-social behaviour incidents reported to the local authority, separated by category. Regulation 4 sets ten categories for this purpose: drug-related, vehicle-related, environmental, noise-related, intimidation, harassment or abuse, vandalism, criminal damage or graffiti, neighbour-related, alcohol-related, dangerous or uncontrolled dogs, and a residual other category. For operational teams, the main change is not the existence of these behaviours but the requirement to code them consistently. Where the Schedule says information must be provided broken down by category, figures must be recorded separately against the regulation 4 headings. That matters for comparability across authorities and for any later national analysis of which interventions are being used against which types of incident.
The Schedule then moves from incident totals to case handling. Local authorities must report the number of applications for an ASB case review, the number of reviews carried out, the number of applications refused and the reasons for refusal, and the number of completed reviews that resulted in a recommendation under section 104(7) of the 2014 Act. That is a notable shift in emphasis. The Regulations are not only concerned with how much anti-social behaviour is reported, but also with how complaints are escalated and what follows when the formal review route is used. Authorities that currently hold refusal reasons or review outcomes in free-text files, committee papers or separate complaints systems may need a more structured record if they are to produce a reliable six-month return.
Enforcement data forms the largest part of the Schedule. Authorities must count applications and outcomes for criminal behaviour orders linked to anti-social behaviour, as well as civil orders under the 2014 Act. The instrument names three civil routes for reporting purposes: respect orders introduced through Part A1, youth injunctions under section 1 and housing injunctions under section 1A. The reporting duty also reaches community protection activity. Local authorities must record warnings issued under section 43(5)(a), community protection notices issued under section 43(1), and fixed penalty notices for breach. For fixed penalties, the return must distinguish between different types of authorised person under section 53 and identify how many penalties exceeded £250. The dataset is therefore concerned not just with use of powers, but with who exercised them and at what financial level.
The same approach carries through to premises and place-based powers. The Schedule requires counts of closure notices and closure orders, again broken down by category, alongside figures on public space protection orders and expedited orders. Within the public space protection order regime, the reporting becomes more detailed still. Authorities must report the number of fixed penalty notices issued for offences under sections 63 or 67 of the 2014 Act, separate those issued by the authority from those issued by an authorised person, and show in each case how many carried a penalty above £250. For compliance teams, that creates a need to reconcile legal, enforcement and contractor records rather than relying on a single community safety log.
The Explanatory Note states that no full impact assessment has been produced for this instrument on its own. Instead, the Government points to the broader impact assessment prepared for the anti-social behaviour measures in the Crime and Policing Act 2026, of which the enabling power for these Regulations forms part. Taken together, the Regulations give the Secretary of State a more standardised picture of local authority reporting, review activity and enforcement use in anti-social behaviour cases. For councils, the immediate issue is practical rather than rhetorical: by 4 November 2026 the legal duty is expected to begin, and data definitions, case-management fields and information-sharing arrangements with authorised persons will need to be robust enough to support the first six-month submission.