The College of Policing is rewriting its stalking guidance. Updating the documents will not be enough.

The College of Policing is consulting on new Authorised Professional Practice for stalking or harassment. This is welcome, and long overdue.

The current national position is fragmented. Advice is spread across several documents, some written before significant changes in stalking law, policy and protective practice. The proposed APP would replace three separate advice documents with formal, role-specific guidance setting clear requirements for policing roles. It covers the identification of stalking, risk identification and assessment, investigations, victim support and safeguarding, suspect management and disruption, relevant legislation, cyberstalking and digital evidence, and multi-agency working with health, probation and specialist stalking services.

The College describes the proposed approach as victim-centred, suspect-focused and context-led. Those are the right principles, but the success of the guidance will not be judged by how well they read on the page. It will depend on whether they change what happens when a victim first contacts the police, when incidents are recorded and connected, when risk is assessed, when an investigation is planned and when a supervisor reviews the response.

It will also depend on whether policing makes proper use of information already held by other services.

Stalking does not reveal itself only through crime reports. A victim may speak to their GP about anxiety, disrupted sleep or declining mental health. They may approach housing because they no longer feel safe at home, disclose concerns at work, seek help from social care or already be known to a specialist domestic abuse service. Probation may hold important information about the perpetrator. Schools and children’s services may see the impact on children without understanding what is happening around them.

Each agency may hold one part of the story. Unless those parts are recognised and connected, the wider course of conduct and cumulative harm remain hidden.

A better police document is necessary. It is not, by itself, the outcome.

The guidance must help stalking to be recognised earlier

One of the most persistent weaknesses in professional responses to stalking is the tendency to divide behaviour into separate incidents.

A message may be recorded as a malicious communication, damage to property as criminal damage and an unwanted appearance at work as a public order concern. A housing officer may record noise or antisocial behaviour. A GP may record anxiety. An employer may know about repeated unwanted contact. Social care may be aware that the victim is becoming increasingly isolated.

Each piece of information may be recorded accurately, yet the stalking itself is missed.

The defining issue is often not the individual act. It is the pattern created through repetition, persistence, fixation, surveillance, intrusion and changing proximity. New police guidance must therefore do more than list behaviours associated with stalking. It must help call handlers, response officers and investigators understand how apparently ordinary or low-level acts can communicate something very different when they form part of a continuing course of conduct.

Partner agencies need that same understanding.

Professionals must look back as well as respond to what has just happened. What came before? Has the behaviour changed? Is contact becoming more frequent, intrusive or threatening? Is the perpetrator appearing at places connected to the victim’s private life? Have they changed their methods after being blocked or challenged? Have they approached friends, relatives, colleagues or children?

Without that enquiry, the latest incident may appear minor because the history surrounding it has been lost.

Stalking is a multi-agency safeguarding issue

The police are responsible for investigating crime and using criminal justice and protective powers. That does not mean responsibility for recognising and responding to stalking sits with policing alone.

Health, housing, social care, probation, education, employers and voluntary-sector services may all hold information relevant to risk. They may also be the first place a victim seeks help.

A housing provider may know that locks have repeatedly been changed or that someone is waiting outside the property. A GP may see repeated presentations connected to fear, exhaustion or deteriorating mental health. An employer may know about unwanted visits, calls or contact with colleagues. Probation may hold information about previous partners, offending or breaches. Children’s services may notice changes in a child’s behaviour or attendance.

None of those services is expected to conduct a criminal investigation. They do, however, have responsibilities to recognise concerns, record information clearly, respond to immediate risk, share relevant information lawfully and escalate where necessary.

Safeguarding does not begin only when a crime has been proved.

The proposed police guidance should be clear about how officers are expected to seek, receive and use information held by other agencies. Partner organisations also need current policies, training and escalation routes of their own. Multi-agency working cannot depend on the police connecting information that other services have failed to recognise, record or share.

Nor should the victim be expected to carry the complete history between agencies.

Risk cannot be reduced to the latest incident

Stalking risk is dynamic. It can change with access, rejection, separation, intervention and the perpetrator’s response to losing control. A risk assessment completed once and then left unchanged cannot provide a reliable picture of a developing course of conduct.

The new guidance should set out clearly when police risk assessments must be reviewed. Further incidents, breaches, increased proximity, new methods of contact, threats and significant changes in the perpetrator’s circumstances should all trigger reassessment. So should any indication that the behaviour is moving from communication or monitoring towards confrontation.

Partner agencies must also understand that risk can change quickly. New information should not simply be added to a record without considering whether it alters the wider picture or requires further safeguarding action.

Cumulative harm must form part of that assessment.

Victims may change their route to work, stop seeing friends, alter their routines, leave employment, move home or withdraw from ordinary life. Some sleep badly, remain constantly alert or spend hours collecting evidence because they believe nothing will happen unless they prove the pattern themselves.

The impact may become visible across several services before anyone identifies stalking. Anxiety, isolation, housing instability, absence from work and changes in a child’s behaviour may all be treated separately, despite arising from the same course of conduct.

These are not secondary concerns. They are part of the harm caused by stalking and may reveal the seriousness, persistence and escalation of the behaviour.

A genuinely victim-centred response must recognise that impact without making the victim responsible for managing the perpetrator or coordinating the professional response.

The investigation must focus on the perpetrator

Victims are often advised to save messages, record incidents, take screenshots, change privacy settings, block accounts, change telephone numbers or avoid particular places. Some practical advice may be necessary, but it must never become the investigation strategy.

Responsibility for investigating stalking rests with the police, not with the person being stalked.

A suspect-focused response requires active enquiries into the perpetrator’s behaviour, history, access, intent and methods. This may include police intelligence, previous reports, former partners or other victims, digital activity, third-party evidence, vehicle movements, workplace information, relevant court orders and conduct across force boundaries.

Other agencies may hold information that substantially changes the understanding of the case. Where relevant and proportionate, that information should be actively sought rather than left for the victim to obtain.

The IOPC review of 50 stalking-related cases identified recurring concerns, including minimisation, victim blaming, weak engagement and inappropriate safety advice. It also warned that advising victims to block suspects could increase risk in some circumstances and lead to the loss of relevant evidence. The IOPC was clear that the cases reviewed were not representative of all policing, but they contain important learning from serious cases involving complaint, death or significant injury.

The new guidance must translate that learning into clear operational expectations. “Suspect-focused” cannot remain a phrase in the introduction. It must shape the enquiries officers make, the information sought from partner agencies and the questions supervisors ask.

Previous behaviour must be actively sought

Stalking perpetrators do not necessarily restrict their behaviour to one victim, one relationship, one agency or one police force area.

A report may appear to be the first known incident simply because nobody has looked beyond the immediate record. Relevant information may sit with another force, probation, housing, health, social care, an employer or a specialist service.

The new guidance should require proportionate searches for previous allegations, intelligence, civil orders, restraining orders, domestic abuse reports and similar concerns involving other people. It should also explain what officers are expected to do when information is held elsewhere and how other agencies should be approached.

This is not about treating untested allegations as proof of guilt. It is about ensuring decisions are not made without information that may reveal repetition, escalation or a broader pattern of behaviour.

Where similar concerns have been raised before, that history may change the assessment of risk, the investigation plan and the protective action required.

Partner agencies must also understand the value of the information they hold. A contact that appears limited within one service may become highly significant when connected with reports held elsewhere.

Stalking Protection Orders must become part of routine decision-making

Stalking Protection Orders have been available in England and Wales since January 2020. They can be sought before charge or conviction and may include both prohibitions and positive requirements.

Despite this, their use remains inconsistent.

The Home Office review found that SPOs were generally regarded as useful and capable of reducing risk. It also identified considerable variation between forces, slow and bureaucratic processes, inconsistent implementation and limited use of positive requirements.

The stalking super-complaint investigation similarly recommended making SPOs simpler and easier for the police to use. Its wider findings resulted in 29 recommendations intended to improve investigations, work with specialist support services and the use of protective orders.

The new guidance must require more than general awareness. Officers should be prompted to consider an SPO or interim SPO at an early stage. The decision, reasoning and proposed next steps should be recorded. Where an application is not pursued, that decision should be open to supervisory review, particularly where the behaviour is persistent or the risk is increasing.

Information from partner agencies may be central to that decision. Housing records, health information, probation assessments, workplace incidents and specialist advocacy records may all help demonstrate pattern, impact and changing risk.

The guidance must also address what happens after an order is made. Who monitors compliance? How are positive requirements coordinated? What information is provided to the victim? How are breaches identified, recorded and investigated? Who reassesses risk when a breach occurs?

Those questions often require a multi-agency response. Obtaining the order is not the end of the safeguarding process.

Specialist advocacy must not be an afterthought

Stalking creates particular risks and places considerable demands on victims. Specialist advocates can help them understand the process, communicate changes in risk, develop safety plans and navigate the different agencies involved. They can also help professionals recognise behaviour that might otherwise be minimised or misunderstood.

It is therefore encouraging that the proposed guidance includes work with specialist stalking services. The practical test will be whether referral becomes routine when stalking is identified, rather than depending on an individual officer’s knowledge of local provision.

Other services also need to know when and how to refer. A GP, housing officer, social worker, probation practitioner or employer may be well placed to identify that specialist support is needed, even where the victim has not yet reported every aspect of the behaviour to the police.

Referral should not be delayed until the case has become highly complex or the risk has escalated. Early specialist involvement can improve safety, communication and the quality of information available to professionals.

It should support agency responsibility, not replace it.

Supervision and professional challenge must be visible

Many of the weaknesses identified in stalking cases cannot be resolved through frontline guidance alone. Police supervisors have a central role in checking whether stalking has been correctly identified, whether the course of conduct has been established, whether risk has been assessed in context and whether the investigation is genuinely focused on the suspect.

They should also review decisions relating to arrest, safeguarding, specialist referral, SPO applications, digital enquiries, repeated reports and breaches. The new guidance needs to be explicit about those responsibilities.

Supervision should involve more than confirming that a checklist has been completed. It should test the reasoning behind decisions and consider whether the response properly reflects the pattern and changing risk.

The same principle applies across partner agencies. Managers and safeguarding leads should question whether concerns have been recognised, recorded, shared and escalated appropriately. Where another agency’s response appears limited or risk is drifting, professionals must be able to challenge and escalate.

This is particularly important where individual acts have been recorded under different categories or dealt with by different teams. Someone has to step back and ask whether the records collectively reveal stalking.

Digital stalking cannot be treated as less serious

Technology has expanded the ways in which perpetrators can monitor, contact, impersonate, intimidate and intrude. The behaviour may involve multiple accounts, location tracking, shared devices, smart technology, spyware, online impersonation, image-based abuse or contact through friends, relatives and professional networks.

Digital conduct is not separate from so-called real-world stalking. It may be central to the perpetrator’s ability to maintain access and control.

The new guidance should help officers understand how online and offline behaviour connect. It must also address evidence preservation, digital investigation and advice that protects the victim without unnecessarily removing communication, support networks or access to evidence.

Other professionals also need to recognise technology-enabled stalking. Employers, schools, health services, housing providers and social care may become aware of repeated online contact, location monitoring or misuse of shared accounts and devices. That information should not be dismissed as a private or purely technological problem.

Telling someone simply to leave social media, change their telephone number, or stop using technology can significantly disrupt their life and close their life down even further than it already is, while doing little to address the person responsible. Wherever lawful and possible, disruption should be directed towards the perpetrator rather than the victim.

Related operational tools must change at the same time

This is where the issue raised in my previous article becomes especially relevant.

The joint NPCC and CPS checklist available through the College of Policing stalking guidance is dated July 2018. It still refers to Police Information Notices but makes no reference to Stalking Protection Orders, introduced in January 2020.

Replacing the main guidance while leaving outdated checklists, templates and training materials in circulation would preserve the fragmentation the new Authorised Professional Practice is intended to resolve.

Every policing document linked to the guidance should therefore be reviewed at the same time. This includes investigation checklists, risk tools, crime-recording prompts, supervisory templates, training and e-learning, referral information, SPO documentation and material used when seeking CPS advice.

Partner agencies should also review their own materials. Domestic abuse policies, safeguarding procedures, referral forms, workplace guidance and information-sharing arrangements may refer only to harassment or isolated incidents without helping staff recognise stalking as a pattern.

Professionals should not be expected to discover that an apparently current document is incomplete and then search elsewhere to fill the gaps. Operational tools need to be coherent because they are often used when workloads are high and time is limited.

Training must reflect professional roles and responsibilities

The proposed guidance is intended to set requirements for every role in policing. That creates an important opportunity.

Call handlers need to recognise indicators that may sit beyond the immediate incident. Response officers need to ask about history, behaviour and impact. Investigators must establish the course of conduct and pursue evidence focused on the suspect. Supervisors must test risk and investigative direction. Senior leaders need to understand demand, quality and consistency across their force.

A single awareness package will not meet all those needs.

Training should reflect role and responsibility, be reinforced through supervision and tested through case review. Otherwise, professionals may understand stalking in principle but struggle to apply that knowledge under operational pressure.

The same applies to other services. Housing staff, health professionals, social workers, probation practitioners, educators, employers and safeguarding leads do not need police investigation training. They do need to recognise stalking, understand cumulative harm, respond safely to disclosures, record relevant information and know when concerns should be shared or escalated.

Attendance at training is not evidence that practice has changed. Organisations must examine the quality of recording, referral, information sharing, safeguarding and decision-making after training has been delivered.

Guidance must be supported by scrutiny

Publication should mark the beginning of implementation, not its conclusion.

Police forces should be able to demonstrate whether stalking is being identified correctly, whether repeat reports are being connected, whether SPOs are being considered and used appropriately, whether victims are referred to specialist support and whether supervisors are carrying out meaningful reviews.

Partner agencies should also be able to show how they identify stalking, respond to disclosures, share relevant information and contribute to multi-agency risk management.

That requires data, audit and qualitative examination of cases. Numbers alone will not provide the full picture. An increase in recorded stalking may reflect better recognition, rising demand or both. More SPO applications may be encouraging, but their quality, timeliness and subsequent management must also be examined.

Victim experience must remain part of that scrutiny. A process can appear compliant while still leaving the victim repeatedly explaining the history, gathering the evidence and trying to persuade different professionals that the behaviour is connected.

An important opportunity

The College of Policing is right to replace fragmented advice with formal Authorised Professional Practice. The proposed emphasis on victims, suspects and context is also welcome. It reflects much of what victims, specialist organisations, reviews and investigations have been saying for years.

A new police document will not, however, resolve the recurring weaknesses in the response to stalking on its own.

The real test is whether the final guidance helps professionals recognise patterns earlier, understand cumulative harm, investigate the perpetrator, use protective powers, work with specialist advocates and respond when risk changes. It must be supported by current operational tools, role-specific training, effective supervision and continuing scrutiny.

Investigators need guidance that helps them build the case rather than wait for the victim to do it. Supervisors need clear expectations against which they can review decisions and challenge drift. Partner agencies must recognise when the information they hold forms part of a wider stalking pattern. Senior leaders across every service need to know whether policy is becoming consistent practice.

Above all, victims need a response in which professionals connect what is known, share responsibility and recognise stalking before the behaviour escalates further.

Updating the police guidance is necessary. Strengthening the wider professional response is the outcome that matters.

About the author

John Trott is the founder of AbuseFreeLife and an independent DHR and DARDR Chair and Author, safeguarding consultant and trainer. He is a former Detective Chief Inspector and former force lead for domestic abuse, stalking HBA and FGM. He is an accredited Senior Investigating Officer and former CEO of a national stalking service and has worked directly with many stalking victims.

He has delivered training on stalking, domestic abuse, coercive control, MARAC and safeguarding across policing, health, social care, housing, probation and specialist services. His work includes direct engagement with victims and professionals responding to high-risk stalking, multi-agency safeguarding and domestic abuse-related deaths through his independent DHR and DARDR Chair and Author work.

Sources

College of Policing, Stalking or harassment: have your say, 23rd June 2026.

College of Policing, Updating the stalking or harassment guidance for police, 23rd June 2026.

IOPC, HMICFRS and College of Policing, Super-complaint: Police response to reports of stalking.

Independent Office for Police Conduct, Review of IOPC cases involving stalking.

Home Office, Review of Stalking Protection Orders, January 2023.

© 2026 John Trott, AbuseFreeLife. All rights reserved.