Your rights in public places
Last reviewed: August 2026. This guide covers the law in England and Wales. It is general information and not legal advice. Please read the full disclaimer at the end of this article.
I have been shooting commercially for well over a decade, and in that time I have been challenged in the street more times than I can count. Some of those challenges were reasonable. Most were based on a version of the law that does not exist. If you carry a camera in public in this country, it pays to know where you actually stand.
This is a plain English guide to the areas that come up most often: your rights in public places, police powers, photographing children, the sites that are genuinely off limits, and the newer legislation that has landed since I first wrote about this. A fair amount has changed, so if you read the earlier version of this article, this one replaces it.
In England and Wales you can generally photograph people and buildings from a public place. No permit is needed, and that applies to the public and the press alike. There is no general law that says you must ask permission before pressing the shutter.
That is the starting point, not the whole picture. Two things sit alongside it.
The first is privacy. Even in a public space, a person can have a reasonable expectation of privacy depending on what they are doing. Somebody going into a clinic, a child in a playground, a person in obvious distress. There is a difference between what you are entitled to do and what you should do, and the courts have been prepared to look at that distinction. Use your judgement.
The second is what you do with the picture afterwards. Taking it and publishing it are two separate questions. If you intend to sell an image, license it, or use it to promote a product or service, you may need a model release from the people in it and permission from the property owner. That is a contract and consent issue rather than a criminal one, but it is the thing most likely to cause you a problem in practice.
Police powers, stop and search, and photography
Police officers cannot stop you photographing in a public place simply because they, or somebody else, would rather you did not. They need a power, and the power has to fit the circumstances.
Just as importantly, officers have no general power to make you delete images or hand over your memory cards. Seizure or deletion needs lawful authority, and in most street situations that authority is not there.
The Terrorism Act 2000
Section 44 used to allow stop and search without suspicion in designated areas. It was heavily criticised, and in 2010 the European Court of Human Rights found in Gillan and Quinton v United Kingdom that it breached the right to private life under Article 8. It was repealed and replaced by the narrower section 47A. That history matters less now than it did, but you will still hear section 44 quoted at you by people who have not kept up.
Section 43 remains in force and is the one you are more likely to meet. It allows an officer to stop and search a person they reasonably suspect to be a terrorist. Reasonable suspicion is a real threshold, and it is not met by the mere act of taking photographs.
Section 58A and photographing police officers
Section 58A covers eliciting or publishing information about members of the armed forces, the intelligence services or the police that is likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism. It is not a ban on photographing police officers.
Photographing officers going about their normal duties, including at protests and incidents, should not on its own give rise to an arrest under this section. There would need to be a reasonable suspicion that the images were intended to assist terrorism.
Protests and the Public Order Act 2023
This is one of the more useful additions since I last wrote about this subject. Section 17 of the Public Order Act 2023 came into force on 2 July 2023. It provides that a constable may not exercise a police power for the sole purpose of preventing someone from observing or reporting on a protest, or on the exercise of police powers connected with one.
It is worth knowing that although the heading of the section refers to journalists, the wording of the section itself does not. It is not limited to accredited press. It followed a run of incidents in which journalists and photographers were detained while covering demonstrations.
How the police deal with media professionals
Although this guide is aimed at amateurs, it helps to understand how the police are expected to engage with working photographers, because the same principles tend to filter down.
Officers may ask questions of anyone photographing a sensitive subject, provided the questioning is lawful and does not amount to deterring somebody from a lawful activity. At incidents, police will often set up a vantage point outside a cordon so that the media can work without obstructing them. Away from a cordon, the media should be able to report from public areas like anyone else. Where a scene is under investigation, access to the scene itself is a matter for the senior investigating officer.
Officers can pass on a request from a distressed member of the public who does not want to be photographed. They cannot enforce that request if you are acting within the law, although there are plenty of occasions where the decent thing to do is lower the camera.
Press cards are the usual way working photographers are distinguished from hobbyists at organised events. The National Union of Journalists is one of the recognised gatekeepers issuing accredited cards to staff journalists and freelancers. A press card is not a licence to do anything you could not otherwise do. It is a means of identification, and it is often what gets you through an accreditation process at a press or PR event.
Prohibited places and the National Security Act 2023
If you take one thing from this article, take this. The old framework around military and defence sites has been replaced, and the new one is considerably wider than most photographers realise.
The National Security Act 2023 introduced a prohibited places regime, with the relevant sections coming into force on 20 December 2023. In broad terms:
- It is an offence to access, enter, inspect, pass over or under, approach or be in the vicinity of a prohibited place for a purpose that you know, or ought reasonably to know, is prejudicial to the safety or interests of the UK. Inspecting expressly includes taking photographs, video or other recordings, and the section also covers sending an unmanned vehicle to do it. The maximum sentence is fourteen years.
- There is a lesser offence of unauthorised entry or inspection, which does not require any prejudicial purpose. It turns on whether you knew, or ought to have known, that you were not authorised.
- A constable can order a person to stop an activity and leave the vicinity of a prohibited place, but only where the officer reasonably believes it is necessary to protect the safety or interests of the UK.
Two practical points. There is no requirement for a prohibited place to be signposted, and the Secretary of State can designate further sites through secondary legislation. On top of that, the Ministry of Defence has taken the view that UK land and buildings used by defence suppliers for the relevant purposes fall within the definition by default. That reaches a lot further than the fenced airbase most people picture when they hear the phrase.
My advice is simple. If a site looks like it is connected with defence, and particularly if there is any signage suggesting it, put the camera down and move on. This is not an area to test on principle.
Other places where photography is restricted
Courts
Photography in and around court buildings is not a grey area. Section 41 of the Criminal Justice Act 1925 makes it an offence to take a photograph, or make a sketch with a view to publication, of a judge, juror, witness or party to proceedings. It applies in the courtroom, in the building, and in the precincts of the building, and it covers people entering and leaving. Separately, making a sound recording of proceedings without permission is dealt with under section 9 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981. The Supreme Court sits outside the 1925 Act, and there are limited arrangements allowing the broadcast of certain proceedings. For everyone else, treat court buildings as camera off.
Private property
Shopping centres, stations, business parks and privately managed public squares are private land, even when they feel public. The landowner can set conditions on photography and can ask you to leave. Standing on a public pavement outside and shooting the same building is a different matter and is generally lawful.
Being visible from a public place does not automatically make a building fair game for every use. Photographing it is one thing, publishing or licensing that image commercially can raise separate issues depending on the subject.
Transport hubs and infrastructure
Stations, airports and similar sites usually have their own photography policies, particularly beyond security checkpoints. Some will require permission for anything that looks like a set up shot with a tripod. Power stations and other critical infrastructure sites will take a dim view of a photographer working the perimeter, and may fall within the prohibited places regime described above.
Photographing children
This is the subject that causes the most anxiety and the most misinformation.
There is no law in England and Wales that specifically prohibits photographing children in a public place. The general position on public photography applies. What changes the picture is intent and content. Images that are indecent fall under the Protection of Children Act 1978 and related legislation. Behaviour that amounts to harassment or a public nuisance can be dealt with under other powers, whatever your intentions were.
Schools, sports clubs, swimming pools, soft play and similar settings almost always operate their own safeguarding policies. If you are shooting at one of those, expect to need parental consent forms, a photo release and possibly a DBS check. That is a policy requirement set by the organisation rather than a statutory one, but it is not optional if you want the work.
Then there is the ethical side, which sits above the legal one. An image taken innocently at a park can end up somewhere you never intended, stripped of its context. A child cannot meaningfully consent to that. My own rule when I am not on a commissioned job is straightforward: if a child is identifiable and central to the frame, I either get a parent’s agreement or I do not take the shot. It has cost me a handful of pictures over the years. It has never cost me a night’s sleep.
Intimate images: what changed in 2025 and 2026
This area has moved a long way in the last two years and it is worth understanding even if it feels a world away from what you shoot.
Sharing an intimate image without consent, and threatening to share one, were already offences under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 as amended by the Online Safety Act 2023. Upskirting and voyeurism are separate specific offences.
Since then, two significant changes:
- Section 138 of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 came into force on 6 February 2026. It inserted new offences into the Sexual Offences Act 2003 covering creating, or requesting the creation of, a purported intimate image of an adult without consent. That is aimed squarely at AI generated and digitally manipulated images.
- The Crime and Policing Act 2026 received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026. Among other things it criminalises the taking or recording of an intimate image without consent, rather than only the sharing of one. It also covers the supply of so called nudification tools, copying images that were shared temporarily, and introduces image deletion orders on conviction.
The practical shift for photographers is that the taking is now the offence, not just the distribution. If you do editing or retouching work for clients, the provisions on generated images are worth reading properly.
Data protection: what happens after the shutter
Most guides to photography law stop at the point the picture is taken. That is a mistake, because once you are storing images of identifiable people you are processing personal data, and UK GDPR applies.
There is a broad exemption for personal, family and household activity, so a hobbyist with a hard drive of holiday pictures is not the target here. Once you sell images, run a website with a portfolio, or hold a client database, that exemption stops being reliable and you need to think about your lawful basis, how long you keep files, and how you would respond if somebody asked you to remove their picture.
Worth noting that the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 has made a number of reforms to UK GDPR, commenced in stages through 2025 and 2026. If you have not looked at your privacy notice since 2024, it is due a read.
Flying a drone for photography
Drone rules changed substantially on 1 January 2026, so anything you read before then is out of date. The headline points:
- A Flyer ID is now required for anyone flying an aircraft of 100g or more. The old threshold was higher.
- An Operator ID is required for any aircraft of 100g or more with a camera, or 250g or more without one, and it must be displayed on the aircraft.
- A UK class marking system, UK0 to UK6, applies to new aircraft placed on the UK market from 1 January 2026, with EU C class marks recognised as equivalent for a transitional period. Older aircraft without a class mark are still legal to fly, but under weight based rules that are more restrictive in some respects.
- Remote ID broadcast is now mandatory for several of the class marked categories.
- The CAA published an updated Drone and Model Aircraft Code in March 2026. Read the current version rather than a summary, including mine.
And a reminder from the section above: the National Security Act provisions on prohibited places expressly cover sending an unmanned vehicle to inspect a site. A drone does not give you a way around any of it.
What to do when somebody challenges you
Sooner or later a security guard, a business owner or a member of the public will tell you to stop. Here is what works.
Stay calm. Almost every one of these situations is resolved by tone rather than by law. Getting defensive turns a conversation into an incident.
Know where you are standing. Public pavement or private land is usually the whole question. If you are on their land, they can ask you to leave and you should.
Ask what the concern is. Often it is not really about the camera. It might be a security policy, a nervous member of staff, or something happening on site that you know nothing about.
Explain rather than lecture. A short, friendly explanation that photography from a public place is generally lawful gets you a lot further than quoting section numbers.
Do not hand over your camera or delete anything under pressure. A private individual has no power to take your equipment or make you delete files. Neither does an officer, without lawful authority.
Walk away if it is going nowhere. No photograph is worth a confrontation.
If the police attend, cooperate and explain what you are doing. Acting lawfully is not a guarantee that nothing will happen, but it is your position and you should state it clearly and politely. If you are detained or arrested, ask for legal advice before answering questions.
Take advice afterwards if you think your rights were breached. A solicitor with media or public order experience is the person for that, not a forum.
The balance
The freedom to photograph in public in this country is broad, and it is worth protecting by using it sensibly. The restrictions that exist are mostly narrow and specific: prohibited places, courts, private land, and the misuse of images rather than the taking of them.
Know the boundaries, be respectful, and when you are genuinely unsure, ask. Most people say yes.
If you found this useful, the Blanc Blog has more on photography, the creative industry and the business of images, including a piece on copyright theft and what to do when your work is used without permission.
Blanc Creative, much more than just commercial photography
I run Blanc Creative from our studio at Broadland Business Park in Norwich, working across commercial photography, dynamic promotional videos, drone operations and podcast production. I work across the whole of the UK, and pricing is transparent on every assignment.
If you have a project in mind, take a look at the portfolio on Blanc Creative and get in touch. I am always happy to have a straight conversation about what you need and what it will cost.
Important: please read
This article is provided for general information only. It is not legal advice and must not be relied upon as legal advice.
I am a professional photographer, not a solicitor or barrister, and I am not qualified to advise on the law. Nothing in this article creates a professional or advisory relationship of any kind between me, Lee Blanchflower trading as Blanc Creative, and any reader.
The content reflects my own general understanding as at August 2026 and relates to the law in England and Wales. The position in Scotland and Northern Ireland differs in a number of respects. Legislation, guidance and case law change frequently, and provisions referred to here may be amended, repealed or brought into force on different dates after publication. Summaries are necessarily simplified and omit exceptions, defences and qualifications that could be important in your circumstances.
You should not take, or refrain from taking, any action on the basis of this article. If you have a specific question or a live problem, take advice from a qualified solicitor and check the current legislation directly at legislation.gov.uk, together with the relevant guidance from the Civil Aviation Authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office and the Crown Prosecution Service.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, I and Lee Blanchflower, accept no liability for any loss, damage, cost or expense arising from any use of, or reliance on, the information in this article, or from any errors or omissions in it. Any links to external sites are provided for convenience only and I take no responsibility for their content or accuracy.
