Notification Requirement: Guessing Games

A part of being on the sex offenders’ register is to have to comply with notification requirements as set out by the Sexual Offences Act. When it comes to staying at a different address within the UK, an offender has to register with a police station if they are staying at an address for a week or more. Makes sense.

Let’s look at the exact wording in the statute (Sexual Offences Act 2003, Section 84):

"(1)A relevant offender must, within the period of 3 days beginning with—

(c)his having resided or stayed, for a qualifying period, at any premises in the United Kingdom the address of which has not been notified to the police under section 83 notify to the police that name, the new home address, the address of those premises [F2, the prescribed details] or (as the case may be) the fact that he has been released, and (in addition) the information set out in section 83(5)."

And here is the text copied from the Guidance on Part 2 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 from the Home Office (updated March 2023):

"Offenders must notify any address in the United Kingdom at which they have resided or stayed for at least seven days, whether for seven consecutive days or for a cumulative period of seven days or more in any 12-month period."

So far, so clear.

In the last few months, this is what we have been told by various police stations and police forces about this exact requirement:

- We dropped by a random police station off the M6 on the way north from Heathrow to tell them that we would be staying in a holiday cottage in Scotland, as of later that day. The officer filled in the form without a problem and wished us a good drive. We were visited by the local police force the very next day, a Saturday morning. They were very nice, just said that they had to check that we were where we said we were. All good.

- We were staying in rural England and registered on day seven with the local police force. The desk officer registered the notification without any problems but when our home PPU was notified, they sent the local force to pay us a visit. The officers who visited were from the same force where we registered but from a different station. They were convinced that offenders had to check in within three days of beginning their stay anywhere but left it up to our home police force to make the decision on whether to press charges or not. I emailed them the exact wording from above and while our PPU did come round annoyed that they didn’t receive a “curtesy” heads-up before we went away, there was no talk about a breach.

- We are now staying in a fairly densely populated part of England, and it is coming up to seven days of our stay here. We went to the local station and they refused to take the notification. They were convinced that notification could only be made at one’s “home” police station and because we hadn’t done that, we were already in breach. When read out the statute, the officer agreed, that it wasn’t a breach after all. But they insisted that we’d have to get home to make the notification before the three days elapsed. We aren’t going home though. “Your bad planning isn’t my concern. You are going to be in breach.” Left to check with “upstairs”, the officer came back and agreed to fill in the form. Once that was done, the officer had no idea what to do with it and “would have to look up the address and find a stamp”. Let’s just say, we took a picture of the paperwork, in case something went wrong and we’d have to prove that we did indeed notify… The officer said that in their eight years of working at this large police station, nobody had ever notified that they were staying in the area. They were very confused and ultimately basically humoured us by filling in the notification form.

The text of the statute is unequivocable. There is no doubt about the requirement and the time limits. Yet every police station has their own rules and ideas about what the legislator intended. We have a few more stays planned for the next while in various places around the country. Let’s see what they think the rules are.

That’s why it’s so important that we all know all the relevant legal documents backwards and forwards. We can’t play guessing games about every aspect of our lives. Not when our freedom and livelihoods depend upon there being certainty. Knowing the wording of the statute and being able to pull it up and read it to the officers does make a difference – sometimes.

What have been your experience with the notification requirements? What were you told? Did you ever have problems at a station?

I wonder whether we’ll be able to turn this exercise into a bingo sheet of ideas about the requirements.