The Home Office has signed the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 (Commencement No. 8) Regulations 2025, bringing forward targeted provisions for England and Wales. The instrument, made on 5 November 2025, starts the new police duty to notify education settings on 7 November 2025 and activates new rules on victim information requests from 12 January 2026.
From 7 November, chief officers must ensure arrangements exist so that where an officer has reasonable grounds to believe a child may be a victim of domestic abuse, the child’s education provider is notified as soon as reasonably practicable. This duty is created by inserting section 49A into the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 via section 20 of the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024.
Section 49A sets out which education providers count as “relevant educational establishments”, covering the school a child attends and, if not registered at a school, the establishment(s) where the child receives education. In England this includes 16 to 19 Academies and institutions in the further education sector.
The obligation is operational rather than discretionary: forces must have arrangements capable of securing timely notifications, with scope for exceptions to be specified by further regulations made by the Secretary of State. This framing mirrors the statutory wording on acting “as soon as is reasonably practicable”.
From 12 January 2026, sections 28 to 30 of the 2024 Act commence. Section 28 inserts new sections 44A to 44E into the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, creating a statutory scheme for requesting third‑party information that relates to a victim or a person at risk of being a victim. Requests must be relevant to a reasonable line of enquiry and be necessary and proportionate.
The legislation requires written requests that explain what is sought, why it is sought and how the material will be handled, and obliges authorised persons to provide notice to the individual concerned unless specific exemptions apply. Counselling notes face a higher threshold: a request may only be made where the material is likely to have substantial probative value.
The Secretary of State must also prepare a statutory code of practice to guide policing and other authorised persons on these requests and on compliance with the new duties. Government materials describe the scope of the code and the list of authorised bodies, which includes police forces, the British Transport Police, Ministry of Defence Police, the National Crime Agency and specified investigators.
Section 29 extends the new scheme to service police by inserting section 44F, ensuring that military policing bodies are brought within the same statutory framework for victim information requests as forces in England and Wales.
Section 30 provides for a review of how the regime operates for counselling information requests. The Secretary of State must publish and lay before Parliament a report as soon as reasonably practicable after a three‑year review period beginning on the day section 28 comes into force, which sets a review end point in January 2029.
Forces should now confirm their local notification pathways with designated safeguarding leads in schools and colleges, align data handling with the statutory content and notice requirements for victim information requests, and prepare to adopt the forthcoming code of practice. Education settings should in turn verify points of contact and record‑keeping to respond to police notifications promptly and consistently with safeguarding duties.