Asked to come in for a voluntary interview

If you are asked to attend a police station, or somewhere else, for a voluntary interview, you have not been arrested. You are free to leave at any point unless and until an officer actually arrests you — that is the legal difference between this and being taken into custody.

The interview itself is still conducted under caution, and everything that applies to a normal police interview — including the caution and the possibility of adverse inference for things you do not mention — applies here too. “Voluntary” describes how you got there, not what happens once you are being questioned.

This is the single most under-used right on this page. Before a voluntary interview goes ahead, the officer arranging it is required to explain that you may obtain free and independent legal advice if you want it, including the right to speak to a solicitor on the phone and to have them present during the interview itself.

PACE guidance is explicit that someone attending voluntarily should be treated with no less consideration than someone in custody, and enjoys an absolute right to legal advice. In practice, a large share of people who attend voluntary interviews go in alone, without ever asking. There is no cost, and asking is never held against you.

Freedom to leave is real, but it has a consequence attached. If it looks unlikely that you would attend voluntarily, police guidance treats that as a reason arrest may become necessary in order to carry out the interview at all. The same applies if you start a voluntary interview and then decide to leave before it is finished — the police are entitled, at that point, to consider whether arresting you is now necessary to complete it.

That cuts both ways: the mere possibility that you might walk out partway through is not, on its own, a valid reason to arrest you before the interview has even started. It only becomes relevant if you actually decline to attend, or actually leave.