The 2026 King’s Speech, only the second since the last General Election after an extended first session of Parliament, arrives at a difficult time for the government.
The government briefing accompanying the speech identifies a total of 37 Bills to be introduced over the new session, none of which directly concerns rural affairs or communities. We understand that Defra was allocated only a single Bill and chose the Clean Water Bill, a headline environmental measure that stands to benefit the countryside but is largely tangential to the wellbeing of its communities.
The full briefing note can be downloaded here, and the Countryside Alliance position is summarised below.
- The creation of a National Police Service presents an opportunity for the government to fix our failing firearms licensing system. The Countryside Alliance has been advocating the replacement of the 38 separate firearms licensing units in England and Wales with a single, dedicated national licensing body. The National Police Service would be a logical place for it to sit.
- This was acknowledged by the Minister for Policing and Crime, Sarah Jones MP, during a parliamentary debate on firearms licensing in February 2026. She said:
“Lots of people pointed to something that we are already beginning to think about: calls for centralised licensing. Members will know that we published the White Paper on police reform recently and we are setting up a national police service. That is an opportunity to look at whether we should have a national licensing system.”
- We have consistently argued that if the government wants a system set up to make the right decisions, structural reform of licensing administration is the logical place to start. The current patchwork system produces inconsistent decision-making as well as widely differing processing times. Centralisation offers the prospect of uniform standards, improved training and better use of specialist expertise – without penalising shotgun owners or diverting police time to unnecessary extra paperwork.
- The Countryside Alliance also advocates for the National Police Service to play a key role in co-ordinating enforcement against waste crime offences. A forthcoming report, to be published by the Alliance in conjunction with the National Rural Crime Network, will recommend that the government:
- Consider the merits of transferring responsibility for the investigation and prosecution of waste crime incidents above a given severity threshold to the National Police Service.
- Require the mutual embedding of liaison officers between the National Police Service and the Environment Agency. In the event the above recommendation is adopted the Environment Agency would presumably maintain responsibility for monitoring environmental impacts of illegal waste sites and overseeing clean-up activity; if the recommendation is not adopted this will still be necessary to co ordinate investigation in relation to organised criminal gangs.
- There should also be a role for the National Police Service to play in disrupting rural crime more broadly, particularly where there is a serious or organised element to offences such as thefts of agricultural machinery that cross police force area boundaries.