How have police guidance and Crown Prosecution Service charging standards for online communications offences evolved since 2015?

1. Legislative turning points: the 2015 changes and their immediate effect

The most concrete legislative change dating from 2015 was section 36 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, which amended the Sexual Offences Act 2003 so certain grooming offences could be committed after a single initial communication — a lowering of the evidential threshold that took effect on 13 April 2015 and directly influenced how online communications could form the basis for criminal charges ^[1].

2. Prosecutorial architecture: DG6, the police and who decides to charge

Charging practice has been professionalised and digitised: the CPS Director’s Guidance on Charging Sixth Edition (DG6, effective 2020) sets out when the police may charge and when referral to a prosecutor is mandatory, requires categorisation of files and a digital referral process, and insists on adherence to the charging model and file standards when seeking CPS decisions — a change that pushed for closer, earlier police‑prosecutor engagement and clearer recording of rationale for charging choices ^{[2] [6] [4]}.

3. Police discretion widened, but with guardrails

Across the 2010s and into DG6 the police were given authority to charge more offences directly — though DG6, its desktop guide and related College of Policing material stress that more serious, complex or sensitive cases should prompt early CPS advice and that statutory limits or Director’s Guidance may still preclude police charging in certain matters ^{[2] [4] [5]}.

4. The Online Safety Act and the CPS’s 2024 re-write of communications guidance

Part 10 of the Online Safety Act 2023, which came into force on 31 January 2024, repealed older offence provisions (including the so-called revenge pornography provision in section 33 CJA 2015 and parts of the MCA 1988 and Communications Act 2003) and created a consolidated statutory regime for communications offences; the CPS updated its communications and cybercrime guidance to incorporate those offences and to remind prosecutors that communications may interact with a wide array of substantive offences ^{[7] [3]}.

5. Safeguards in guidance: proportionality, children and mental health

CPS guidance explicitly requires prosecutors to weigh Article 10 freedom of expression considerations and to proceed only where interference with free speech is necessary and proportionate; it also directs special care where suspects are children or have relevant mental health issues and flags the use of Community Impact Statements and platform reporting tools as investigatory adjuncts ^{[8] [7]}.

6. Practice and controversy: arrests, convictions and the free-speech debate

Reporting and freedom‑of‑information data cited by commentators and the House of Lords Library have raised alarm about rising arrest figures — press reporting suggested police were making over 12,000 arrests a year under sections 1 and 127 in recent years — but the CPS and independent debunkers emphasise the high legal threshold for prosecution, the difference between arrest and charging, and the requirement that prosecutors only proceed where the evidential and public interest tests are met ^{[8] [9]}.

7. The practical tension ahead: capacity, clarity and politics

The net effect since 2015 is a more structured charging architecture and a broadened statutory toolkit for prosecuting harmful online communications, but that expansion has landed amid political pressure for tougher online safety, public concern about policing of speech, and operational strains that DG6 and College of Policing guidance attempt to manage through standards and joint oversight — the available sources document the rules and the debates but not a definitive assessment of whether outcomes (better victim protection or disproportionate enforcement) dominate in practice ^{[10] [5] [8]}.