The Sentencing Act 2026 release changes were due to start on 2 September 2026. On 25 July the Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, announced an urgent review. He confirmed that no prisoner would leave custody early under the policy while it runs. The commencement regulations have not been revoked. The September date still stands in law.
What did the Prime Minister announce?
Burnham said on 25 July 2026 that the government would review the automatic release rules. He paused their operation pending the outcome. He gave no terms of reference, no reporting date and no revised start date.
Pressure had built from several directions. The Victims’ Commissioner and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner wrote jointly to ministers on 6 July asking for a delay. An opposition day debate followed on 7 July. The Leader of the Opposition has since called for emergency legislation to stop the changes outright.
Downing Street has not said whether it will revoke the commencement order or legislate. That distinction is the whole of the current legal position.
What the Sentencing Act 2026 release changes would do
The Act received Royal Assent on 22 January 2026 as chapter 2. The release rules sit in Part 2.
Most prisoners in England and Wales serve part of a custodial term inside. They serve the rest in the community under probation supervision. The Act moves the automatic release point for standard determinate sentences, the most common sentence type. It does so in two steps.
For most prisoners the point moves from 40% or half of the custodial term to one third. For those serving four years or more for specified violent and sexual offences, it moves from two thirds to half.
The Sentencing Act 2026 (Commencement No. 4) Regulations 2026, SI 2026/609, were made on 8 June 2026. They set 2 September as the start date. The new points would apply at once to anyone sentenced after that date. They would phase in for serving prisoners by sentence length. Around 700 people would have become eligible for release in the first phase in September.
Licence conditions start on the same date under the same instrument. Those rules let probation stop a person on licence from driving, attending public events, entering licensed premises or entering defined restriction zones.
Is the 2 September date still law?
Yes, on the face of it. A pause announced from the despatch box does not amend a statutory instrument.
SI 2026/609 remains in force and unamended. Only two things would change that. The government could make a revoking or amending instrument. Parliament could pass primary legislation. Until one of those happens, 2 September 2026 is still the date the new release points take effect in law.
The pause is an operational promise about how ministers will use the machinery. It is not a change to the machinery.
For lawyers that gap matters more than the politics. Advice given in August rests on a start date the government says it will not act on, in an instrument it has not withdrawn.
Criminal practitioners are already advising on release dates worked out under a regime that may never start. Until the review reports, any release date given to a client on a standard determinate sentence is provisional. Probation planning and victim contact arrangements are equally unsettled, and no revised date has been published.
Who is affected?
Three groups, in different ways.
The widest uncertainty falls on anyone sentenced around the September date. The regulations would have applied the new release point to them at once. Serving prisoners in the phased cohorts face a longer wait. Their position turns on both the review outcome and the phasing rules.
Victims and their families are the third group. Contact arrangements under the victim contact scheme rest on notified release dates. A paused start leaves those notifications provisional too. The two commissioners made exactly that point on 6 July.
What should practitioners do now?
Record the position rather than predict it. Write a file note. Say that release dates assume a 2 September start, that the start is under review, and that no revised date exists. In three months that note will be worth more than a firm figure that turned out wrong.
Flag the provisional status to clients in writing. That covers sentencing advice. It covers mitigation that turns on the real length of a term. It covers timing advice on parole and licence.
Watch for the instrument, not the announcement. The publishable moment is a new commencement SI, a revoking instrument, or the review reporting. A press statement changes nothing on the statute book.
Added days also remain live. Regulations made this year raised the maximum days that can be added through independent adjudication from 42 to 84. That mechanism survives the 2026 Act. Added days move the release point whichever regime applies.
Where does this sit in the wider picture?
The government had two main answers to pressure on the justice system. One was these release rules. The other was restricting jury trial. Both are now unsettled.
The Legal Brief covered the jury trial position in Burnham’s signalled rethink on jury trial restrictions. It reported the constitutional questions that arise when legacy and release arrangements reach the courts in Dillon (No 2) in the Supreme Court.
The House of Commons Library has published a briefing on the changes, CBP-10974, updated on 27 July 2026. The commencement instrument is SI 2026/609. The release rules sit in Part 2 of the Sentencing Act 2026.