Rights and LimitsAfter an arrestDeleting your record: the ACRO process, and what it does not cover

Deleting your record: the ACRO process, and what it does not cover

Applies to: England & Wales. The law is materially different in Scotland and Northern Ireland — notably, Scotland has no adverse-inference rule for silence. Do not apply this page outside England and Wales.

What you must do, and what you can refuse

Every claim below links to the law it comes from, with the wording quoted so you can check it yourself.

Lawful to refuse — but it costs you

Not an offence, but it carries a penalty or an inference.

A court conviction cannot be removed through the Record Deletion Process, whatever the circumstances.
NPCC/ACRO Record Deletion Process guidance (gov.uk), para 1.5.6
“Court convictions are not eligible for record deletion from the PNC under this process.”
Read it at legislation.gov.ukquote checked 2026-08-25
Without a successful application, a PNC record is otherwise retained until you would be treated as 100 years old — deletion earlier than that needs a chief officer to exercise discretion after your grounds have been examined and agreed.
NPCC/ACRO Record Deletion Process guidance (gov.uk), para 1.5.5
“Under this Guidance, PNC records are required to be retained until a person is deemed to have reached 100 years of age.— However, Chief Officers can exercise their discretion, in exceptional circumstances, to delete records for which they are responsible”
Read it at legislation.gov.ukquote checked 2026-08-25

One national process, three national systems

England and Wales have a single national process for applying to delete biometric and criminal-record information held on the three national police systems: the Police National Computer (PNC), the National DNA Database (NDNAD) and the National Fingerprint Database (IDENT1). It is called the Record Deletion Process, and it is administered centrally by the ACRO Information Management unit, which acts as the point of contact between applicants and the individual police force that actually owns the record.

ACRO does not make the decision itself. The chief officer of the force that holds the record does — ACRO coordinates the application, forwards it, and manages the correspondence.

What it does — and does not — delete

You cannot use this process to remove a court conviction. That is stated explicitly in the national guidance: court convictions are not eligible for deletion under it, at all. A conviction is not a fingerprint record you can apply to have wiped — it is a matter of criminal record, and outside this process entirely.

What the process can do is deal with fingerprints, DNA and PNC entries that were never a conviction — arrests that led nowhere, charges that were dropped, cases that ended in acquittal — where the record was retained longer than you think it should have been, or where you believe it was taken unlawfully or following a mistaken-identity arrest.

One figure worth knowing: absent a successful deletion application, a PNC record is otherwise kept until the person is treated as having reached 100 years of age. That is the scale of the default, which is exactly why the deletion process exists.

Last reviewed 2026-08-25. Next review due 2027-02-25. No solicitor has reviewed this page — see [email protected] if you think something here is wrong.