Special Police Services Consultation: Call for Submissions

In December, OutdoorArtsUK were asked by the Home Office to attend a Stakeholders Roundtable to discuss potential changes to Special Police Services legislation. Special Police Services are defined as services provided upon request to the police to ensure the safety of an event. The local policing body can recharge these costs back to the event organiser or persons requesting the service.

The Stakeholders Roundtable was part of the consultation process, where the Home Office are considering making changes to how the police can recover SPS costs. SPS stands for Special Police Services and is defined as services provided at the request of any person… subject to the payment to the local policing body of charges on such scales as may be determined by that body. In practice, these services are provided where an event requires police presence to ensure safety.

The Home Office review is now being conducted because they are concerned that too much of the cost of Special Police Services is falling to the public purse. This may mean widening the scope of the police’s powers to recover costs via Special Police Services, including legislative change to allow policing to recover the costs of Special Police Services deployed on public land.

Throughout the roundtable, hosted by Sarah Jones MP, Home Office colleagues were keen to stress that they were aware of the complexity of the issue and the breadth of events taking place on public land that may be affected. Hence conducting this period of consultation.

After reaching out to a handful of OutdoorArtsUK members who shared their concerns about possible changes, General Manager David highlighted the importance of large scale free to access events that promote social cohesion and encourage a sense of pride in place. These are often funded by local authorities and any increase in Special Police Services costs may cause the events to stop existing. He cautioned the possibility that cost saving implications around these events, particularly ones of cultural or religious significance, may lead to cancellations, which ultimately could, in the long run, increase policing costs, if the social cohesion that these events promote is lost. Thank you to those colleagues who were able to give us this insight in such quick turnaround to allow us to raise this at the roundtable.

Call for Submissions

If you would be affected by changes to SPS and would like to have your say on the consultations, The Home Office is inviting responses until 6th February 2026 at 5pm. They are particularly keen to have responses on the following questions:

• How could primary legislative changes to allow for greater cost recovery on public land or any other changes that increased policing’s level of cost recovery, impact your operations and/or industry? How would this impact small businesses within your industry?
• What delivery risks would you anticipate from any changes that increased cost recovery?
• What actions would need to be taken to mitigate any delivery risks, either by you, policing or government? Please also outline what timescale would be required to mitigate these.
• Do you think there is an alternative to primary legislative change that would financially compensate the police for the additional pull on their resources in a proportionate way that we should explore?
• What alternative actions could you or your industry take to mitigate the demand and subsequent cost on policing?

You’ll need to include the following in your response:

• Your full name
• Your job title or capacity in which you are responding to this
• Company name/organisation
• Contact details.

Responses can be sent to Section25SPS@homeoffice.gov.uk

Please contact General Manager David Doust if you have any questions about the roundtable or the consultation period, please use the contact us button on our website here.