Home Office Guidance and Policing Review

01/05/2026

The non-statutory guidance has been reviewed, and the updated version will be published shortly.  The Home Office security guidance is also being refreshed.  These will be circulated in due course.

The Home Secretary has announced a review of police force structures in E&W. This will include the firearms licensing function.

It is worthy of note that we, along with our colleagues in other shooting organisations, we rarely get calls from Scottish members in respect of firearms licensing processes operated by the Police Service of Scotland.  The majority of our calls come from members in E&W, facing delays, obstruction, arrogance and non-existent customer service.  The ability to say ‘how can I help you’ seems not to be in the vocabulary of some licensing departments.  The flashy slogans on Force websites, which talk about service and ethics, are just words to satisfy Force Executives' egos, because they simply don’t translate on the ground in a substantial number of police services. How sad.

We are aware that in the Police Scotland area, 98.2.2% of renewal applications are dealt with prior to expiry, meaning there is no E&W nonsense of having to store guns whilst the police process the application.  In the days of full cost recovery, this is frankly abysmal. We are aware of an English force that manages only 13.7% of renewals prior to expiry.  Of the 38 processing centres in E&W, only 20 meet the NPCC targets for renewals.  18 don’t.  Why?

There are only seven Section 7 authorities in Scotland, and they relate to four people.  The majority are in place post-bereavement. Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Hertfordshire had over 1,000 Section 7s.  Why?

Over and above that, the Police Service of Scotland also provides certification for air guns.

We will continue to push the Home Office to look at a national firearms licensing service.  The model exists, it works and is a dam sight better than the service in E&W.