Non-crime hate incidents are to be scrapped nationwide under plans that police chiefs will present to the Home Secretary next month. The Telegraph has more.

Police leaders have decided that NCHIs are no longer “fit for purpose” after warnings that recording them undermines freedom of speech and diverts officers away from fighting crime.

Under the plans, NCHIs will be replaced with a new “common sense” system, where only a fraction of such incidents will be recorded under the most serious category of anti-social behaviour.

An NCHI falls short of being criminal but is perceived to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards a person with a particular characteristic. They stay on police records indefinitely and can come up in background checks.

The move to scrap them follows high-profile cases such as that of Graham Linehan, the Father Ted co-creator, whose arrest for a series of posts on X was criticised by Donald Trump’s administration as a “departure from democracy”.

The plans will be published next month by the College of Policing and National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and are expected to be backed by Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary.

Lord Herbert, the Chairman of the College of Policing, told the Telegraph: “NCHIs will go as a concept. That system will be scrapped and replaced with a completely different system.

“There will be no recording of anything like it on crime databases. Instead, only the most serious category of what will be treated as anti-social behaviour will be recorded. It’s a sea change.”

Their exclusion from crime databases means any incidents will no longer have to be declared as part of checks in job applications.

Lord Herbert, a former Conservative policing minister, said controversial arrests or investigations such as those of Mr Linehan and Allison Pearson, a Telegraph columnist, would not occur under the new system.

Mr Linehan was arrested at Heathrow airport by five officers on suspicion of inciting violence with posts on X.

Pearson was questioned by police on her doorstep on Remembrance Sunday for allegedly inciting racial hatred in a tweet. Both cases were subsequently dropped, with no further action taken.

Lord Herbert said changes were necessary because the system, which dates back to 1999, was no longer “fit for purpose” because of the growth in social media and the advent of smartphones.

NCHIs were introduced following the Macpherson Inquiry into Stephen Lawrence’s murder in order to monitor hate and hostility in communities.

“It’s drawn police into an area that I don’t believe they wanted to be in,” he said. “Police have been caricatured that they wanted to be involved in this, but I haven’t met a copper who does.”

Under the plans, police forces will be instructed not to log “hate” incidents on crime databases and instead treat them only as “intelligence” reports.

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