Reasonable Grounds for Suspicion
The objective standard required for stop and search and arrest. The officer must have a genuine suspicion based on objective factors — not personal factors like appearance, age, race, or previous convictions alone.
Independent editorial summary — not the official statute text. Read the official version on legislation.gov.uk.
PACE Code A describes reasonable grounds for suspicion as the legal test which a police officer must satisfy before they can stop and detain individuals or vehicles to search them under powers such as section 1 of PACE. The test has two parts: the officer must genuinely suspect the object will be found, and that suspicion must be objectively reasonable.
On the objective element, the Code requires that there must be an objective basis for that suspicion based on facts, information and/or intelligence which are relevant to the likelihood that the object in question will be found, so that a reasonable person would be entitled to reach the same conclusion based on the same facts and information and/or intelligence. The Code is explicit that personal factors can never support reasonable grounds for suspicion on their own.
Related terms
Official sources
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