Emergency Workers (Obstruction) Act 2006

The Emergency Services (Obstruction) Act 2006 (c 39) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It is intended to reduce the instances of obstruction of, or assaults on, emergency service personnel.

Emergency Workers (Obstruction) Act 2006^[1]

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Long title	An Act to make it an offence to obstruct or hinder persons who provide emergency services; and for connected purposes.
Citation	2006 c 39
Territorial extent	England and Wales and Northern Ireland.[2]
Dates
Royal assent	8 November 2006
Status: Current legislation
History of passage through Parliament
Text of statute as originally enacted
Revised text of statute as amended

Sections 1 to 6 came into force on 20 February 2007.^[3]

The corresponding Swedish law is called sabotage mot blåljusverksamhet [sv] (blåljussabotage for short, literally bluelight sabotage in English).

Scope

The Act defines emergency service personnel to cover firefighters, paramedics or other persons responding on behalf of the statutory ambulance service, members of HM Coastguard, and crew of a vessel of the RNLI or any other lifeboat.

Offences and penalties

The Act makes it an offence to obstruct any emergency service crew while responding to an emergency, whether physically or not, punishable by a fine of up to level 5 on the standard scale.

See R v McMenemy [2009] EWCA Crim 42, [2009] 2 Cr App R (S).

Section 6 - Repeals

This section repealed sections 44(3) and (4) of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004.

Section 7 - Short title, commencement and extent

This section came into force on 8 November 2006.^[4]

The Emergency Workers (Obstruction) Act 2006 (Commencement) Order 2007 (S.I. 2007/153 (C.7)) was made under section 7(2).

The Act does not extend to Scotland save for ss.1-4 where the persons impeded or obstructed are Ministry of Defence firefighters or any person assisting them. Otherwise, the relevant legislation in Scotland is the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005

References

• Halsbury's Statutes,
• Ormerod (ed). Smith and Hogan's Criminal Law. 13th ed. OUP. 2011. p 673.

1. The citation of this Act by this short title is authorised by section 7(1) of this Act.
2. The Emergency Workers (Obstruction) Act 2006, section 7(3)
3. The Emergency Workers (Obstruction) Act 2006, section 7(2); the Emergency Workers (Obstruction) Act 2006 (Commencement) Order 2007 (S.I. 2007/153 (C.7)), article 2
4. The Interpretation Act 1978, section 4(b)

External links

• The full text of Emergency Workers (Obstruction) Act 2006 at Wikisource
• Text of the Emergency Workers (Obstruction) Act 2006 as in force today (including any amendments) within the United Kingdom, from legislation.gov.uk.