Newly introduced offences under the Online Safety Act 2023

Dyddiad y datganiad:
5 December 2025

FOI reference: FOI-2025-3255

You asked

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I hereby request the following information from your publication Sexual offences in England and Wales overview: year ending March 2025(released 4 November 2025).

Please provide the number of police-recorded offences in England & Wales for the year ending March 2025 (and if available, broken down by police force or region) for the newly introduced offences under the Online Safety Act 2023, namely:

  1. "Sharing or threatening to share intimate photograph or film" (offence code under 88C)

  2. "Sending etc photograph or film of genitals" (offence code under 88E)

  3. The overall number of recorded offences that have been attributed to those two new offences (i.e. how many of the "around 13,000" new offences mentioned under the two new offences in paragraph 4.185 are for each offence separately) Office for National Statistics

  4. If possible, the number of these offences (each of the two offences) by victim age band (e.g. under 18, 18-24, 25-34, 35+), and by gender of victim.

  5. If possible, for each offence, the number of cases that resulted in a charge, prosecution or conviction in the year ending March 2025 (or latest available).

We said

Thank you for your request.  

Please find below responses to your queries: 

  1. Crimes involving sharing or threatening to share intimate photograph or film (offence code under 88C) can be found under Table 11 of the Sexual offences prevalence and victim characteristics, England and Wales appendix tables for the year ending March 2025.

  2. Crimes involving sending etc photograph or film of genitals (offence code under 88E) can be found in Table 12 of the Sexual offences prevalence and victim characteristics, England and Wales appendix tables for the year ending March 2025. We do not hold breakdowns by Police Force Area for these sub offence codes. If you require this information, you can contact the Home Office on: CrimeandPoliceStats@homeoffice.gov.uk. 

  3. Crimes involving the overall number of recorded offences that have been attributed to those two new offences (i.e. how many of the around 13,000 new offences mentioned under the two new offences in paragraph 4.185 are for each offence separately) is covered by the responses above to questions 1 and 2. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact us on the email address below with further details and we will do our best to help.

  4. We do not hold any further data breakdowns. The Home Office team may be better placed to help and can be contacted at CrimeandPoliceStats@homeoffice.gov.uk.

  5. The Crown Prosecution Service publish overall prosecution figures and police referrals as well as charging rates in their CPS quarterly data summaries  which may be of use. Alternatively, you can contact them on: enquiries@cps.gov.uk.

If you have any other questions, please email us at crimestatistics@ons.gov.uk and we will endeavour to help.

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