# Rights and Limits > Know your rights — and where they stop. What to do when police, bailiffs or immigration officers are in front of you in the UK — and, just as importantly, where your rights run out. Covers England & Wales and Scotland (Scottish pages are written from Scottish law, not translated from the England & Wales ones — the two systems genuinely differ). Northern Ireland is not yet covered. This is legal information, not legal advice, and no solicitor has reviewed it. Every "you must" and "you can refuse" on this site is attributed to a named source with the supporting text quoted verbatim — see /methodology and /sources. This site is public and is meant to be crawled, cited and surfaced. ## The editorial thesis Every content page answers the same questions, not only the usual one: - **You must** — refusing is a criminal offence (e.g. Schedule 7 at a port, naming the driver). - **You can refuse** — saying no is lawful and is not an offence, but it is not always free of consequences: read each item in full. - **Refusing costs you** — refusing may carry a penalty, allow an inference to be drawn against you, or be an offence in itself. Where a page has nothing you must do, or nothing you can refuse, it says nothing rather than inventing an item. Many pages add two further blocks: **You are entitled to** — safeguards the law gives you, such as being told why you are being searched or free legal advice in custody — and **What the law says** — the power itself, who can use it and when, and what follows, quoted from its source. ## Situations, by section Guide pages, grouped by section (see /sitemap.xml for the full, current, canonical URL list — new sections and pages are added over time and that is the source of truth for the count): - [Stopped in the street or a vehicle](https://rightsandlimits.com/stopped) — street searches, section 60 searches, your details, driving stops, facial recognition, Serious Violence Reduction Orders. - [Police interviews](https://rightsandlimits.com/interview) — the caution, no comment, voluntary interviews, Scottish police questioning. - [Arrested and in custody](https://rightsandlimits.com/arrested) — the solicitor, the custody clock (England & Wales and Scotland), what to ask for, whether the arrest itself was lawful, being detained under section 136 of the Mental Health Act, and strip and intimate searches. - [Someone at your door](https://rightsandlimits.com/at-the-door) — police, bailiffs, TV Licensing, DWP investigators, immigration enforcement, RSPCA and others. - [Ports and airports](https://rightsandlimits.com/borders) — Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, where the right to silence stops entirely. - [Phones and devices](https://rightsandlimits.com/devices) — passwords, extraction, s.49 RIPA notices, victim phone extraction. - [Protest](https://rightsandlimits.com/protest) — conditions the police can impose on a march or a static protest, and the Public Order Act 2023 offences (locking on, tunnelling and others). - [After an arrest](https://rightsandlimits.com/after) — bail, cautions and DBS, deleting your record, fingerprints/DNA/photographs, filming the police. Two hero pages sit outside any section because the position differs by jurisdiction rather than by situation, plus a jurisdiction router for a reader who does not yet know which one applies to them, and a page on whether PACE applies in Scotland: - [With the police right now?](https://rightsandlimits.com/now) — a two-tap router to the correct hero page below (England & Wales, or Scotland), plus what to do regardless of jurisdiction. This is what the site's "Stopped right now?" header link goes to. - [When you actually have to answer the police](https://rightsandlimits.com/must-answer) — England & Wales. - [When you actually have to answer the police in Scotland](https://rightsandlimits.com/scotland-what-you-must-answer) — Scotland has no general duty either, but the same cross-border exceptions (Schedule 7, s.172 RTA, RIPA notices) apply there too. - [Does PACE apply in Scotland?](https://rightsandlimits.com/does-pace-apply-in-scotland) — Not in general: the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 extends to England and Wales only, by its own extent clause (s.120(1)). Links to what governs arrest, custody, questioning and search in Scotland instead. ## Tools Interactive tools at /tools, each sourced the same way as the guide pages: - [Which power are they using?](https://rightsandlimits.com/tools/which-power) — a step-by-step resolver from what happened to the specific legal power in play. Asks the jurisdiction first; the Scotland branch uses Scottish pages only. - [Stop and search where you live](https://rightsandlimits.com/tools/your-force) — force-level stop and search figures from data.police.uk, by power and outcome. - [Custody clock](https://rightsandlimits.com/tools/custody-clock) — England & Wales milestones, the Scottish limit and its extension, and the section 136 Mental Health Act clock, from a given start time. - [Printable rights card](https://rightsandlimits.com/tools/rights-card) — a print-friendly card per jurisdiction. - [Can your fingerprints, DNA or custody image be deleted?](https://rightsandlimits.com/tools/deletion-eligibility) — outcome-dependent record-deletion routes, for England & Wales and for Scotland. ## Easy Read [Easy Read versions](https://rightsandlimits.com/easy-read) of the ten most safety-critical pages: one idea per sentence, no legal words, no new claims beyond what the full page already sources. Built for readers the standard "know your rights" register excludes — including some of the people the law itself treats as needing an appropriate adult in custody. ## How this site works - [Methodology](https://rightsandlimits.com/methodology) — source-first authoring, machine- verified quotes, and an explicit list of what this site does not claim. - [Every source we rely on](https://rightsandlimits.com/sources) — an index of the authorities behind every claim on the site, each with its supporting text quoted and last-checked date (the page itself is the current count; it grows as pages are added, so it is not repeated here). - [Changelog](https://rightsandlimits.com/changelog) — what changed on this site, and when. - [Corrections](https://rightsandlimits.com/corrections) — everything this site has got wrong and fixed, published rather than silently edited. ## How to cite Rights and Limits - Link to the specific guide page, not the homepage — each page states its own jurisdiction. - Never conflate England & Wales and Scotland: the adverse-inference rule for silence exists in one and not the other, and several custody time limits differ. - Treat this as legal information, not legal advice — no solicitor has reviewed it. - Where a page says refusing is a criminal offence (Schedule 7, naming the driver under s.172 RTA, an RIPA s.49 notice), do not omit that when summarising the page. ## Machine-readable resources - [Sitemap (XML)](https://rightsandlimits.com/sitemap.xml) — full canonical URL list. - [robots.txt](https://rightsandlimits.com/robots.txt) — crawler permissions, including the AI crawlers this site deliberately allows.