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Robert Hargreaves explains how the Crime & Policing Act rewrites corporate criminal liability
- Section 250 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026, now in force, extends the senior manager attribution test from specified economic crimes to all criminal offences.
- There is no reasonable procedures defence: a corporate is exposed to liability regardless of the quality of its compliance framework.
- Practitioners advising corporate clients must act now: risk assessments, governance mapping, senior manager training, and self-reporting strategies all require urgent review.
The Crime and Policing Act 2026 (CPA 2026) received royal assent on 29 April 2026. Its scope is broad: retail crime, antisocial behaviour, knife crime, sexual offending, terrorism, and policing powers all feature. Within Part 17 (Miscellaneous and general), however, sits a reform of immediate and profound significance to corporate practitioners.
Section 250 came into force on 29 June 2026, by virtue of s 255(3)(k), which commences the section at the end of the period of two months beginning with the day on which the Act was passed. With the commencement of this section,
