Rights of entry under PACE. A flowchart that attempts to show in what circumstances the police can enter (or possibly force entry to) a private building without a court order.
The flowchart below was originally prepared for a local squat. It only covers the situation before or until a court order is granted to evict you. I have not removed all the local references, but the flowchart ‘as is’ may still prove useful for other people. It attempts to reflect the situation under Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) as it is at the moment (see date below), but is almost certainly incomplete and doesn’t consider all possibilities.
For general (including emergency) advice, you could contact the Advisory Service for Squatters, on 020 7359 8814 (fax 020 7359 5185, email advice@squat.freeserve.co.uk, website www.squat.freeserve.co.uk.
© Copyright 2001, Andrew Gray
What, “copyright”! Isn’t copyright evil? [ You better read these notes]
This briefing was written by me (with or without help from others) for Trident Ploughshares, but may be used freely and copied/distributed by others. In order to guarantee this freedom, the briefing is copyrighted and licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (formal license statement follows).
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License.”
I am not a lawyer. The briefing is not guaranteed in any way, and is not a substitute for proper legal advice. Feedback and corrections are very welcome, phone 0845 4588 368, email andrew@andrewgray.uklinux.net.
Andrew Gray, TP legal support (England & Wales)
This briefing was last revised: 15/4/2001
The flowchart is also available for download in [PDF format] and in [FIG format].