Overview
- Home Office reforms end routine recording and investigation of lawful but offensive posts by abolishing the non‑crime hate incident category, with many issues to be logged as anti‑social behavior instead.
- The College of Policing and National Police Chiefs’ Council review said police should still gather intelligence on hate and hostility to prevent harm, even as forces stop treating lawful speech as a police matter.
- Metropolitan Police data show that since pausing NCHI investigations in October 2025, officers saved thousands of hours and solved 1,525 hate crimes between October and February, up from 764 a year earlier.
- Scale figures cited in coverage put NCHI activity at about 133,000 recorded cases since 2014 across 43 forces, with 9,305 reports under investigation across 34 forces in 2024–2025.
- Police record systems have sometimes tagged non‑crime reports as crimes and labeled people as suspects or victims, which chiefs called inappropriate, and forces are being told to fix those practices.