UK Protected Persons Service
service of the UK government
The UK Protected Persons Service (UKPPS) is a service provided by the government of the United Kingdom that provides personal protection to people at risk of serious harm, such as those requiring witness protection or at threat from domestic abuse, honour-based violence, or organised crime.
The service can protect people via actions such as giving people new identities and homes. The service can relocate people within the United Kingdom, but in some instances will relocate people internationally. Protected people who enter the service have access to a psychologist, despite this, being in the service can have a "devastating psychological impact". The service is voluntary, as people must agree to be protected by the service.
The UKPPS was set up in 2013, and is a national service led by the National Crime Agency which had regional units. Police Scotland, Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Metropolitan Police had their own units, but worked in close alignment with the UKPPS. The UKPPS was reorganised in 2019, with regional units coming under centralised control within the National Crime Agency.
The service is also responsible for national standards, co-ordinating across existing services, encouraging knowledge sharing about protection services across police forces and improving local services and accountability.
In 2014, the service provided protection for around 3000 people at a cost of approximately £20 million per year. By 2025, the service was still providing protection for 3000 people.
“UK Protected Persons Service” enters the record as service of the UK government. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Protected, Persons and Service can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“UK Protected Persons Service” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Protected, Persons and Service provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q114761496. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2013, 2019, 2014 and 2025.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “UK Protected Persons Service”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow UK Protected Persons Service primary sources, UK Protected Persons Service archive and Protected research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “UK Protected Persons Service”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “UK Protected Persons Service” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.