If you have been issued with a police caution, you may only now be realising the serious and long term impact a caution will have on your future.

If you are working in the finance sector, and are regulated by the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority), then you will be aware that a caution will usually need to be disclosed to your employer and regulator, particularly if you are providing client-facing services.

If you are a working professional, or hope to be, it is unlikely that you would have come into contact with the police before. When you were taken to the police station it would most likely have been an intimidating and confusing experience for you. In this sort of environment it is difficult, for even the most level headed of people, to make the right decision.

Unfortunately many people do not instruct a solicitor when they are at the police station, often incorrectly assuming that if they follow the police’s advice and “tell the truth” that they will get out of the police station with a “slap on the wrists”.

Even if you had used the services of the duty solicitor, you may now be realising that the advice you received may not have been in your best interests. This can often be the case in the context of domestic assault allegations where allegations have been made in the heat of the moment but where your spouse, partner, family or friend had never intended for you to be taken to the police station and cautioned.

The police will very often issue a police caution on the basis that it is the easiest way out of the police station for you. The police may have said that if you don’t accept the police caution that things could get “a lot worse”; namely Court and potentially even prison. This is of course a very persuasive argument to someone who is afraid for their job/future/family. The law however prevents the police from unfairly coercing suspects into accepting a police caution and there is a clear procedure, set out in guidelines and formulated over many years of practice, that the police are obliged to implement.

Minor breaches of the guidelines are often tolerated and not seen as a reason to remove a caution, however serious and fundamental breaches will render a caution unfair and will form the basis for removal of the police caution.

I have significant experience of assessing police caution cases. I will be able to give you accurate advice at an early stage of your case. I will be able to advise you whether there has been a fundamental flaw in the manner in which the police have issued you with a police caution.

If there is a fundamental flaw in the way in which the police gave you your police caution then I offer reasonable fixed fee rates to apply to have your police caution removed.

Contrary to what you may read elsewhere on the internet, you definitely can have a police caution removed – I have personal experience of removing police cautions for solicitors, bankers, students, teachers, dentists, pharmacists, professors, police officers and others.

It is possible for you to ask the police yourself to have your caution removed, as indeed it is possible for a litigant in person to act for themselves in any legal process. If you want to act for yourself, I can offer you guidance during a telephone consultation on how to proceed with your police caution removal application.

I do generally recommend however that I draft your application to have your police caution removed as, aside from anything, having a lawyer act on your behalf tells the police that you are determined to have the police caution removed and the possibility of judicial review (and extensive costs being awarded against the police) is very real.

I am a qualified solicitor and Director of Legisia Legal Services. I have extensive experience of applying for the removal of police cautions from the PNC, challenging DBS certificates and DBS barring decisions. I have had many successful cases, and for cases where judicial review proceedings have been issued, I am usually able to recoup my clients’ costs from the police. I have co-authored a journal paper on the reform of the police cautioning procedure in the Criminal Law Review (the leading criminal law journal : “Suggestions for Reform to the Simple Cautioning procedure”). I also wrote the UK Westlaw Insight on Police Cautions and published an article in the Criminal Law and Justice Weekly on anonymity in criminal proceedings and its impact on the police caution: Adult Defendant Anonymity in Criminal Proceedings