Emergency Workers (Obstruction) Act 2006 ^[1]

Act of Parliament
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 Northern Ireland [2]
Dates
Royal assent	8 November 2006
Commencement	20 February 2007 [3]
Status: Current legislation
History of passage through Parliament
Text of statute as originally enacted
Text of the Emergency Workers (Obstruction) Act 2006 as in force today (including any amendments) within the United Kingdom, from legislation.gov.uk.

The Emergency Services (Obstruction) Act 2006 ^[1] (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.

Contents

• Scope
• Offences and penalties
• References
• External links

The act was passed as a private member's bill. ^[4]

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. ^[5]

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).

References

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

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 .