Plain-English guides on Section 250 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026, SM&CR obligations, and compliance evidence standards for FCA-regulated firms.
Section 250 covers all UK partnerships, not only bodies corporate. FCA-regulated firms run as limited liability partnerships face a senior-manager question that the usual register-based gap analysis does not answer, because partner authority comes from the LLP agreement, not from an SMF designation. This guide walks through the difference.
At a typical FCA-regulated asset manager, the portfolio manager running a strategy that holds a substantial part of the firm's assets under management can meet the Section 250 senior-manager test without holding any Senior Management Function. This guide maps where s.250(3) reaches beyond the SM&CR perimeter at investment firms, including the sub-adviser dimension.
Wave 2 role maps add insurance claims directors and asset-management operations heads to the Section 250 corpus. The insight is practical: review real authority, source provenance, and evidence records — not invented benchmark counts or market rankings.
Section 250 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026 (c.20, s.255(3)) came into force today, 29 June 2026. No grace period applies. This post explains what the commencement means in practice, what firms with completed gap analyses now hold, and what firms without one face.
Section 250 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026 (c.20) is now in force. This guide covers what the board should minute today, why post-commencement documentation still matters for mitigation and prosecutorial discretion, and the realistic first-prosecution outlook based on current SFO and CPS practice.
The phrase "a substantial part of activities" decides how far Section 250 reaches into your organisation, and the statute never defines it. This guide looks at how the same words are used in analogous legislation, the factors that push an assessment one way or the other, and why over-inclusion is the safer error.
Whether a non-executive director falls within Section 250 turns on what the NED actually does, not the title on the board pack. A NED who only attends meetings sits at one end of the range; a NED who chairs the risk committee or holds a subsidiary seat in an operating capacity sits at the other. This guide runs the s.250(3) functional test across that range.
Law firms advising on Section 250 consistently identify training for in-scope individuals as an action firms should complete. This guide explains what a Section 250 training brief must cover, what it must not claim, and how the training record fits into the board evidence pack.
MLROs, COLPs, and COFAs sit in an unusual position under Section 250. They are the compliance officers who may be running firm-wide gap analyses — but whether they themselves fall within the s.250(3) "senior manager" test depends on whether their role involves organisational authority over a substantial part of activities, or oversight and advisory functions that sit outside that boundary.
Section 250 applies to bodies corporate and partnerships separately. In a group structure, the "senior manager of what" question matters: a group CEO or shared-services head may simultaneously be a senior manager of several subsidiary entities, each subject to the attribution mechanism independently. Skadden's June 2026 group-entity analysis provides the clearest published framework for mapping this exposure.
Section 250 has no statutory defence. Documented board engagement is evidential mitigation — it can inform prosecutorial discretion and be relevant at sentencing — but it is not a shield. This guide explains what a board should formally minute about Section 250, when to minute it, and the honest limits of what that record achieves.
Section 250 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026 is not a financial-crime-specific provision. Under s.250(1), where a senior manager acting within the scope of their authority commits any offence under the law of England and Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland, the organisation also commits that offence. The all-offence scope is the central feature that distinguishes s.250 from the ECCTA 2023 and Bribery Act attribution mechanisms, and it is the primary source of urgency for FCA-regulated firms.
Section 250(1) of the Crime and Policing Act 2026 attributes a senior manager's offence to the organisation where they act within the "actual or apparent scope of their authority". "Apparent authority" is an established agency-law concept — but its application to the s.250 attribution test has not yet been tested in any prosecution. CMS and Ashurst have each published analysis of where the boundary is likely to sit; this guide draws on their published conclusions while being explicit about what remains uncertain.
Skadden and Travers Smith — among the advisers who published substantive Section 250 analyses after Royal Assent — identified delegation matrices and authority documentation as a concrete action FCA-regulated firms should complete before 29 June 2026. This guide explains what needs to be documented, why the scope-of-authority gate in s.250(1) makes it directly relevant, and how it fits into the broader gap analysis workflow.
There is no prescribed Section 250 declaration form. That is precisely why firms keep asking what they are meant to produce. The answer is three artefacts: a record of who you identified and why, an audit trail of how you told them and what they said, and a board evidence pack that ties the two together. This guide explains what each one must contain.
The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 introduced a failure-to-prevent fraud offence for large organisations — and a reasonable-procedures defence to go with it. Section 250 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026 introduced a corporate attribution mechanism for any senior manager's offending — and no statutory defence at all. These are different provisions, with different scope, different triggers, and critically different positions on what documented diligence can achieve.
FCA Policy Statement PS26/6 (22 April 2026) extends the Conduct Rules (COCON) to cover non-financial misconduct explicitly from September 2026. This piece maps the interaction between the FCA's expanded NFM rules and the Section 250 corporate criminal attribution mechanism in the Crime and Policing Act 2026 — two distinct regimes that share an overlapping population of in-scope individuals.
FCA Policy Statement PS26/6 (22 April 2026) signals a future Phase 2 reform to simplify SM&CR, including removing the Certification Regime. That reform requires new legislation and has no confirmed date. But the direction of travel has a direct implication for Section 250: a simplified SM&CR structure does not reduce the criminal attribution exposure under s.250 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026. If anything, it widens the visible gap.
Whether someone is a senior manager under Section 250 has nothing to do with their job title or whether the FCA approved them. It turns on a functional test in s.250(3). This guide applies that test to the roles a gap analysis most often gets wrong: the CTO, the COO, the divisional head, and the interim executive nobody put on the register.
A firm facing an offence attributed to it under Section 250 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026 will need a contemporaneous record of what it knew, what it did, and when. "We had a policy" is not enough. Documentary evidence of action is. This guide walks through what that evidence has to look like to hold up in 2027 or 2028.
The most common Section 250 misreading we see is "we are SM&CR-compliant, so we are Section 250-compliant". The statute does not say that. Section 250(3) defines a senior manager by what they do, not by who the FCA has approved, and that test reaches well past your SMF register.
You're evaluating compliance tools with weeks to go before Section 250 commences on 29 June 2026. Pick wrong and you end up with evidence that won't stand up. These seven criteria separate software built for Section 250 from generic compliance tools bent to fit the job.
Section 250 doesn't stop at your own payroll. When you rely on a sub-adviser, an outsourced compliance function or a key introducer, their senior managers sit inside your risk picture too. Here's what to request from them, and what to keep.
The date is fixed by statute. Section 250 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026 comes into force on 29 June 2026, at the end of two months after Royal Assent on 29 April 2026. There is no commencement order and no regulatory discretion over the date; only Parliament could change it. For most firms there is enough time left to run the gap analysis, complete a declaration cycle, and assemble a board evidence pack. Here is what each week needs to look like.
Section 250 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026 takes effect on 29 June 2026. This checklist walks through the five-phase compliance process: gap identification, declaration cycle, counterparty requests, board evidence, and ongoing monitoring.
If the FCA or a court ever asks what your firm did about Section 250, the board evidence pack is the answer your lawyers reach for. It records the gap analysis, the declarations, and the board sign-off in one file. Here is what belongs in it, and why the format you save it in matters as much as the contents.
A spreadsheet of names and an email thread of signed forms are not the same as an evidence pack a court will trust. Section 250 needs documentation that is immutable, timestamped, and produced through a process you can trace end to end. Here is what that looks like in practice.
A clean SM&CR register does not mean you are covered for Section 250. The two frameworks cover different people, carry different consequences, and one of them carries a fixed 29 June 2026 deadline. Here is how they actually differ.
SM&CR sorts the people at an FCA-authorised firm into three groups, with FCA pre-approval reserved for the most senior. Knowing who falls outside that net is where a Section 250 gap analysis begins.
Section 250 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026 attributes criminal conduct by a "senior manager" to the organisation they help run. The s.250(3) test for who qualifies reaches well past the SM&CR population, and the scope of offences it captures is not limited to the Act itself. It comes into force on 29 June 2026.
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