Being Arrested in the UK: Your Rights in Police Custody

Being arrested comes with a specific set of legal rights, and those rights differ depending on where in the UK the arrest happens. This guide sets out the England and Wales position under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE), then explains how Scotland and Northern Ireland differ.

Your Core Rights After Arrest (England and Wales)

If you are arrested in England and Wales, PACE and its Codes of Practice give you a specific set of protections that apply from the moment you arrive at a police station.

The right to free legal advice. Under PACE section 58, you have the right to consult a solicitor privately, free of charge, at any time. This right can only be delayed in narrow circumstances involving an indictable offence and specific, serious grounds set out in the Act, and any such delay can never be extended beyond 36 hours.

The right to have someone informed. Under PACE section 56, you have the right to have a friend, relative, or other named person told that you have been arrested and where you are being held.

The right to consult the Codes of Practice. PACE Code C gives you the right to see a copy of the applicable Codes, which set out in detail how the police must treat someone in custody.

The appropriate adult safeguard. Anyone under 18, or an adult who is vulnerable or appears to have a mental disorder or learning difficulty, is entitled to have an appropriate adult present during police interviews and certain other procedures, under PACE Code C.

Beyond these, custody rights also cover access to an interpreter where needed and access to medical attention. All of these rights exist alongside the caution a suspect is given before questioning, which explains what can and cannot be held against them if they stay silent; see our guide to the right to remain silent for how that works.

How Long the Police Can Hold You

In England and Wales, PACE sets out a step-by-step ladder for how long someone can be held in custody before being charged.

• 24 hours is the normal maximum, under section 41.
• A police superintendent can authorise an extension to 36 hours, under section 42, where the offence is indictable and the extension is necessary to secure or preserve evidence, or to obtain it by questioning.
• Beyond that, only a magistrates' court can authorise further detention, up to a maximum of 96 hours, under sections 43 and 44.

Every stage of this ladder requires a specific justification; detention cannot simply continue by default, and someone who is not charged within the applicable limit must be released, with or without bail. Moving from one stage to the next is not automatic. A superintendent can only authorise the move to 36 hours where the offence under investigation is indictable and the extension is genuinely necessary to secure or preserve evidence or to obtain it by questioning the suspect, and any further extension beyond that needs a magistrates' court to be satisfied of the same kind of necessity before granting it. The structure is designed so that continued detention has to be actively justified at each stage, not simply assumed.

Terrorism Detention Is a Different Regime

Detention under terrorism powers does not follow the PACE ladder above. Under Schedule 8 of the Terrorism Act 2000, a person arrested on suspicion of a terrorism offence can be held for up to 14 days. This maximum was set by the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, which reduced it down from a previous 28-day limit. It is a genuinely separate legal regime from ordinary PACE detention, and the two should not be treated as interchangeable. A person detained under terrorism powers is still entitled to the core protections described above, including free legal advice and having someone informed of their detention, but the length of time they can be held, and the specific procedural safeguards around it, come from the Terrorism Act 2000 rather than PACE sections 41 to 44.

Scotland: A Different Framework

Scotland does not use PACE at all. Arrest and custody are governed by the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2016, which came into force on 25 January 2018 and replaced Scotland's previous, more fragmented arrest law with a single statutory power of arrest under section 1.

Once arrested, custody in Scotland is normally limited to 12 hours under section 9. That period can be extended once, by a further 12 hours, to a maximum of 24 hours, under section 11, and any extension must be authorised and reviewed by a police officer who was not involved in investigating the case. As in England and Wales, there is a right to consult a solicitor privately, at any time, under section 44 of the 2016 Act.

The 12-plus-12 structure in Scotland is a genuinely different architecture from the 24-36-96 hour ladder in England and Wales, not simply the same rules under a different name. Someone arrested in Scotland reaches their maximum custody period, 24 hours, roughly a quarter of the way through the equivalent England and Wales maximum of 96 hours, which reflects Scotland's separate statutory approach rather than any difference in how serious an offence has to be to justify an arrest in the first place.

Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland's custody framework broadly mirrors the PACE approach used in England and Wales, but through its own separate legislation, the Police and Criminal Evidence (Northern Ireland) Order 1989, rather than the same Act. The underlying principles, including access to legal advice and defined limits on detention before charge, carry across, though the specific provisions sit in NI's own statute book.

If you are being questioned, remember that anything filmed or recorded around an arrest, including by bystanders, is a separate legal question from the custody rights described here; see our guide to filming the police in public for more on that topic.

This guide explains general custody rights under the law of England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland; it is not legal advice for a specific arrest. Anyone in custody can ask for free legal advice through the duty solicitor scheme. For the wider picture, see the UK Criminal Law hub.