On Tuesday (5 August 2025) the Home Office published revised Statutory Guidance to Chief Officers of Police on firearms licensing. This comes off the back of the 2023 consultation on firearms licensing following the inquest into the tragic Plymouth shooting in 2021, which was attributed to police failure. The headline revision is that applicants for shotgun certificate grants and renewals will now be required to give details of two referees rather than one. This amounts to an alignment of Section 2 shotgun licensing with Section 1 firearms licensing. This alignment is at a sensible and acceptable level but, critically, does not address the real reason that guns end up in the wrong hands – the unfit-for-purpose licensing system with 43 disparate licensing authorities in England and Wales.
Of the revisions to the statutory guidance, Policing Minister Dame Diana Johnson said: “Only those who meet the highest standards of safety and responsibility should be permitted to use shotguns or firearms, and it is crucial that police have full information about the suitability of all applicants for these lethal weapons.” It is disappointing that the minister continues to refer to shotguns as “weapons” in this context – a matter that we will seek to raise directly. She assumes that shotguns used as tools for conservation, crop protection and recreation should be defined, as the Cambridge Dictionary says, as an “object used in fighting or war”. Her comments did not address the ability (or lack thereof) of police firearms licensing departments to implement the legislation in practice.
None of the many revisions will make any difference where the licensing system fails as it did in Plymouth and has done far too often elsewhere. Whilst we support these changes, there can be no justification for further restricting gun ownership and the government must address the fundamental question of why we have an antiquated system with 43 separate licensing authorities too many of which are notorious for their inconsistency and poor performance – just look at the league table of forces.
Requiring two referees for shotgun licences rather than one is unlikely to do unnecessary harm to the legitimate use of shotguns for both work and recreation but, realistically, its impact on reducing risk to public safety is likely to be negligible given how stringent the background checks for shotgun ownership already rightly are. Of much greater concern are the government’s plans to re-open a consultation into further restrictions on firearms licensing by even greater alignment of shotgun certificates with those for other firearms like rifles. This would serve only to harm legitimate use of shotguns by farmers, keepers, pest-controllers, game shooters, clay shooters and more. What is needed is root and branch reform of the licensing system.
Let us not forget that the inquest into the 2021 Plymouth shooting found that there was “a serious failure within the [Devon and Cornwall Police] Firearms and Explosives Licensing Unit (FELU) to heed and apply the 2016 Home Office guidance”, confirming that the existing law is sufficiently stringent already and needs only to be applied properly. That is why the Countryside Alliance is campaigning for the creation of a single, centralised licensing authority in England and Wales, which delivers a safe, consistent, effective and efficient service for all – a far cry from the postcode lottery currently in place.
The new statutory guidance can be read in full here.