The Victims and Courts Act 2026 received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026 and, in the enacted text published by legislation.gov.uk, is framed as a broad criminal justice measure rather than a single-issue victims’ bill. Its operative effect reaches across sentencing hearings, family law restrictions on parental responsibility, non-disclosure agreements, the Victims’ Commissioner’s remit, prosecution procedure and sentence review rules. Taken together, the Act does two things at once. It gives victims a stronger statutory position in relation to information, representations and safeguarding, while also changing how courts and justice agencies manage cases after conviction. For practitioners, the significance lies less in any one clause than in the way the Act links criminal courts, probation providers, local authorities, family courts and mental health decision-makers into a more formal set of duties.
One of the clearest procedural changes concerns offenders who refuse to attend sentencing. The Act inserts a new power into the Sentencing Code allowing the Crown Court to order attendance where an offender has been convicted, is being held in custody pending sentence, and has refused or is reasonably suspected of refusing to come to court for the sentencing hearing. The order may be made by the court of its own motion or on the prosecutor’s application. For offenders aged under 18, the court must consult the relevant youth offending team before making such an order. For adults, the Act permits a prison officer, young offender institution officer or prisoner custody officer to use reasonable force where that is necessary and proportionate to bring the offender to court. Failure to comply without reasonable excuse becomes a criminal contempt of court. A linked power allows the court to impose a prison sanctions order, subject to regulations made by the Secretary of State under the affirmative procedure, reflecting punishments already available under prison discipline rules. Parallel provision is made for service courts under the Armed Forces Act 2006, with an added requirement to consider welfare in cases involving those under 18.
A second major strand concerns parental responsibility where serious sexual offending is proved. The Act inserts new sections into the Children Act 1989 requiring the Crown Court to make a prohibited steps order where an offender is sentenced to life imprisonment, or at least four years’ imprisonment or detention, for a serious sexual offence against a child and has parental responsibility for a child. The order prevents the offender from taking any parental step without the consent of the High Court or the family court. The same model is applied more specifically where a person is sentenced for rape and the Crown Court is satisfied that a child was conceived as a result of that rape. In that setting, the court must make a prohibited steps order when sentencing unless one of the statutory exceptions applies. Those exceptions are narrow: an existing qualifying order, a bar under adoption legislation, or a conclusion that making the order would not be in the interests of justice. The practical effect is immediate. The criminal court now becomes the point at which parental control can be halted, but ongoing variation, discharge and enforcement sit with the family court or High Court rather than the Crown Court. That division matters for local authorities, children’s services and family practitioners, because the order is automatic at sentence in qualifying cases, but its later management is transferred into the family jurisdiction.
The Act also deals with appeal scenarios. A prohibited steps order made under the new provisions does not automatically fall away if the offender is later acquitted on appeal, or if a sentence is reduced below the statutory threshold. Instead, the legislation requires review. In relevant cases, the local authority for the child’s area must apply to the court to review the order as soon as reasonably practicable and in any event within 30 days of the acquittal or sentence reduction. There is a further notification route for rape cases where the Crown Court considers that a child may have been conceived as a result of the offence, but cannot make the direct order because the statutory test for certainty is not met. In those cases, the court must notify the relevant local authority within 30 days of sentence. The local authority must then make enquiries, including whether the victim, or another person with parental responsibility if the victim has died, consents to an application for a family court order. This creates a staged mechanism rather than leaving the question unaddressed.
On confidentiality, the Act rewrites section 17 of the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024. Any term in an agreement is void so far as it seeks to stop a victim, or a person who reasonably believes they are a victim, from making an allegation or disclosure about relevant criminal conduct. It is also void so far as it seeks to prevent disclosure about another party’s response to that conduct or to the making of an allegation. This is a substantial tightening of the law around so-called gagging clauses. The drafting is broader than a simple right to report to the police. It covers the underlying conduct and the way another party responded to it. The Secretary of State may create a category of excepted agreements by regulations and may also specify circumstances, purposes or recipient groups for protected disclosures within those agreements. Even so, the starting point in the statute is that contractual drafting cannot lawfully close down disclosure of criminal conduct. The section binds the Crown, but with express carve-outs for agreements made by His Majesty in a private capacity, for the Security Service, the Secret Intelligence Service and GCHQ, and for certain special forces agreements dealing with operational information. For employers, universities and settlement advisers, the compliance message is straightforward: confidentiality clauses now sit behind statutory victim disclosure rights, not above them.
Schedule 2 is the longest and most operationally important part of the Act. It restructures the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004 so that victims’ rights to make representations and receive information are recast in a new Part 3A. Across those provisions, the provider of probation services becomes the main administrative gateway for many notification and representation duties. The revised scheme updates who qualifies, which offences are covered and what information must be given. Victims may receive information about release, consideration for release, licence conditions, supervision requirements, discharge from hospital, leave from hospital and related conditions where those matters are judged appropriate. The legislation also extends the machinery for cases involving mentally disordered offenders and patients, including hospital orders, restriction orders, limitation directions, transfer directions and community treatment orders. The policy shift is not only about serious cases attracting long custodial terms. The Act adds a request-based route for further categories, including offences involving domestic abuse and a set of listed offences in new Schedule 6A. It also creates a risk-based disclosure power where a provider of probation services considers that a victim would face physical or psychological harm if information were not disclosed. In mental health tribunal cases, the Act permits victim impact statements to be forwarded to the tribunal and, unless there are good reasons not to do so, allows the person who made the statement to ask to read it at a relevant hearing.
The Act also expands the statutory role of the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses. The long-standing bar on dealing with individual cases is loosened where the Commissioner considers that a particular case raises public policy issues relevant to other victims or witnesses, and where acting in relation to that case is likely to promote others’ interests. That is a measured but important change. It does not turn the office into a casework body in general, but it does allow individual files to be examined where they expose a wider system issue. A separate provision gives the Commissioner power to request co-operation from local authorities and registered social housing providers in matters concerning victims and witnesses of anti-social behaviour. Those bodies must comply so far as it is appropriate and reasonably practicable. The Act therefore reaches beyond the conventional police-court-probation chain and into housing management and local government practice. The reporting framework is tightened as well. Under amendments to the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024, the Commissioner must produce reports on code compliance for the same periods covered by the Secretary of State’s and Attorney General’s own reviews, and those ministers must have regard to the Commissioner’s report. In administrative terms, that gives the office a more formal place in monitoring whether the victims’ code is actually being delivered.
Not all of the Act is victim-facing. Several clauses address justice system administration. Amendments to the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 remove wording that tied certain CPS designations and appointments to possession of a general qualification, while making clear that unqualified appointees do not gain rights of audience or rights to conduct litigation for reserved legal activities under the Legal Services Act 2007. That is a boundary-setting amendment rather than a deregulation measure. The rules on private prosecution costs are also revised. Courts are directed towards payment from central funds of an amount reasonably sufficient to compensate the prosecutor for expenses properly incurred, but the detailed operation remains subject to regulations. Before making those regulations, the Lord Chancellor must consult the Law Society, the Bar Council and others considered appropriate, and must publish an impact assessment. That requirement signals that costs reform in this area is expected to have material effects on litigants and the wider market. For sentence reviews, the Act adjusts the timetable for unduly lenient sentence referrals. Where the Attorney General receives a request in the final 14 days of the standard 28-day period, notice may be given within 14 days of receipt. The Court of Appeal is also given a power, in victim-request cases in England and Wales, to allow late notice up to six months after sentence where the interests of justice support it. Linked amendments require the victims’ code to include information about the opportunity to ask the Attorney General to consider a referral. The result is a modest but concrete widening of access to the review mechanism.
Commencement is staggered. The provisions on Crown Prosecutor appointments, private prosecution costs, sentence review time limits, the duty to notify victims about sentence review opportunities, and magistrates’ court imprisonment terms for certain offences come into force at the end of the period of two months beginning with 29 April 2026. The consequential powers, extent, commencement and short title provisions came into force on Royal Assent, while the remainder will be brought in by regulations. For justice agencies, the implementation burden will not fall evenly. Courts, prisons and custody staff will need operational guidance on compulsory attendance at sentencing. Local authorities and family practitioners will need systems for review applications and rape-related notifications. Probation providers and hospitals will need workable processes for the expanded information regime, including mental health cases. Employers and institutions using settlement agreements will need to revisit confidentiality wording. The larger point is that the Victims and Courts Act 2026 is not a symbolic statement of support for victims. It is a machinery Act. It changes who must notify, who must consult, who must apply, who may disclose and when a court must act. That makes it one of the more operationally significant criminal justice statutes enacted in 2026.
For policy readers, the most important feature is the Act’s preference for mandatory duties over discretionary encouragement. The Crown Court must make prohibited steps orders in defined cases. Local authorities must review those orders after specified appellate outcomes. Probation providers must take all reasonable steps to provide statutory information where the conditions are met. Tribunal processes must now accommodate victim impact statements in a narrower but clearer set of circumstances. That drafting choice should make the legislation easier to audit than earlier, more diffuse victim policy frameworks. It also means implementation risk will sit in guidance, regulations and inter-agency handover rather than in uncertainty about whether Parliament intended action at all. The next stage, therefore, will depend on commencement regulations, secondary legislation on prison sanctions and exception categories, and operational instructions issued across the justice and local government system.