Section 250 and LLPs: what FCA-regulated partnerships need to know

How does Section 250 apply to partnerships?

Section 250 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026 took effect on 29 June 2026, and it applies to "a body corporate or partnership". Partnerships are named in the text, not swept in by implication. The attribution mechanism in s.250(1) and the functional test in s.250(3) both reach a partnership on the same terms as a company. A firm run as a limited liability partnership (LLP), or as a traditional partnership, sits squarely in scope.

Worth being precise about what s.250(1) does. Where a senior manager, acting within the actual or apparent scope of their authority, commits a criminal offence under the law of England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, the organisation also commits that offence. The scope is any UK criminal offence, not only offences created by the 2026 Act. That breadth is the genuinely new element.

This is general information, not legal advice. Consult a qualified solicitor or FCA-regulated compliance adviser for your firm's specific situation.

Most published commentary on the senior-manager concept has been written with law firms and professional-services partnerships in mind. There is far less aimed at FCA-regulated partnerships specifically: the investment boutiques, adviser networks and asset managers structured as LLPs. The analysis for them carries a distinct twist, which the rest of this guide sets out.

Who is a "senior manager" in a partnership?

The test does not soften because the entity is a partnership. Under s.250(3), a "senior manager" is an individual who plays a significant role in the making of decisions about how the whole or a substantial part of the activities of the partnership are to be managed or organised, or in the actual managing or organising of the whole or a substantial part of those activities. Same wording, same threshold.

What changes is where authority comes from. In a company, executive authority is delegated down from the board through titles and mandates. In a partnership, it grows out of the partnership agreement, the management committee structure, and the division of responsibilities the partners have settled among themselves.

So the s.250 assessment for a partnership cannot read authority off an org chart. It has to read the LLP agreement and the firm's real management arrangements to see who actually decides: which partners sit on the management committee, who holds the managing-partner role, who runs each practice or desk.

Are equity partners senior managers under Section 250?

Equity partners are owners, but ownership is not the test. Authority is. An equity partner who sits on the management committee, leads a substantial part of the business, or holds a designated management role (managing partner, head of a practice area or desk) is a strong candidate under s.250(3). An equity partner whose work is confined to their own clients or fee-earning, with no broader management responsibility, is a weaker one, equity stake notwithstanding.

Treating every equity partner as in scope, or none of them, both miss the point. The functional test separates the partner who helps run the firm from the partner who is simply a senior practitioner holding an equity share. That call has to be made partner by partner.

When do salaried partners and consultants qualify?

Title is a poor guide in a partnership. A "salaried partner" may carry a partner title for client-facing reasons while holding little real management authority. Or they may in fact run a substantial part of the firm. A consultant or fixed-share member can hold genuine authority despite a status that sounds peripheral. Because s.250(3) says nothing about ownership or employment status, the salaried partner who chairs the management committee is a stronger candidate than the equity partner who only closes their own deals.

The assessment follows the authority, not the label on the membership register. It is the same principle that catches an interim executive inside a company: the statute asks what the person does. A partnership simply has more ways to bury that behind a title.

What is the SM&CR baseline for an FCA-regulated LLP?

An FCA-regulated LLP is subject to SM&CR like any other authorised firm. The regime has three parts: the Senior Managers Regime, where holders of a Senior Management Function (SMF) need FCA pre-approval before acting; the Certification Regime, where the firm itself certifies staff annually for roles that could cause significant harm (these roles are not FCA pre-approved); and the Conduct Rules, which cover almost all other staff, with limited carve-outs such as purely ancillary roles. Apply that to a partnership and you get an SM&CR baseline: the partners and members the FCA approved or the firm certified.

The gap between that baseline and the s.250(3) population can be wider in a partnership than in a company. Partnership management authority is often informal and consensual, settled by seniority and the partnership agreement rather than recorded in approved-person designations. A partner who carries real weight in how the firm is run, without holding an SMF, is exactly the kind of person the SM&CR baseline misses and s.250 reaches. Keep in mind these are different mechanisms: the SM&CR Duty of Responsibility is enforced through regulatory sanctions, not criminal prosecution, while s.250 attributes a criminal offence to the firm.

What does a partnership gap analysis look like?

A standard gap analysis starts with an FCA register extract to establish who is SM&CR-covered. For a partnership, that first step does less work, because partner management authority does not flow from FCA designations and so is not fully captured in the register. You have to supplement it with the firm's own governance documents: the LLP agreement, the management committee membership, the schedule of designated responsibilities among partners.

The population to assess at a partnership is built from the inside, from how the partners have agreed to run the firm, rather than imported from the register. Then apply the functional test to that population. Which partners and members play a significant role in a substantial part of the firm's activities? Record the reasoning and a confidence level for each, then run a declaration cycle so the in-scope partners confirm their responsibilities on the record.

What is the board evidence pack equivalent for a partnership?

A partnership has no board, but it has a governing body: the partners' meeting, the members' meeting, or the management committee that holds management authority under the LLP agreement. That body does the job the board does in a company. It should review the Section 250 analysis and formally acknowledge it, with the acknowledgement minuted.

The evidence pack is the same artefact either way. It compiles the identification analysis, the responses from in-scope partners and members, and the governing body's sign-off into a single record. Exported as PDF/A-3B (ISO 19005-3), it preserves the document reliably and can carry embedded attachments and a content hash. None of that makes a file automatically admissible; admissibility turns on authenticity, integrity and chain of custody, which a court assesses case by case. The format is built to support those things, so the pack stands up as a contemporaneous business record. The only adjustment for a partnership is whose acknowledgement closes the loop: the management committee or partners' meeting, recorded in its minutes.

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Sources

• Crime and Policing Act 2026, s.250www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2026/20/section/250
• FCA — Senior Managers and Certification Regimewww.fca.org.uk/firms/senior-managers-certification-regime
• FCA Registerregister.fca.org.uk/