People convicted of the most serious crimes should not be able to leave prison and simply adopt a different name without proper scrutiny.

Changing a name does not erase a conviction.

But court reports, public warnings, media coverage and the information known to victims are usually connected to the name under which that person was convicted. A new identity can make it much harder for victims, future partners and communities to connect an offender with their known history.

Current law already recognises this risk.

Registered sex, violent and terrorist offenders must report name changes to the police. The Crime and Policing Act 2026 strengthened the rules for registered sex offenders by requiring advance notification and allowing police to restrict applications for official identity documents in certain cases.

But reporting a change is not the same as requiring permission, and the restrictions are not automatically applied to every serious offender.

We are calling on the UK Government to introduce a mandatory approval process before anyone convicted of murder, manslaughter, rape, child sexual offences, serious domestic abuse, stalking or another serious violent or sexual offence can change or begin using a different name.

This should apply while the offender is in prison, following their release and for as long as they remain on licence or subject to statutory notification requirements.

Before approving a change, the police or a court should complete a formal safeguarding and risk assessment. Permission should only be granted for a genuine, evidenced reason and never where the change could be used to conceal an offender’s identity, avoid safeguarding checks, mislead others or cause further distress or danger to a victim.

Every approved name must remain permanently linked to the offender’s birth name, conviction name and all known aliases across criminal justice, DBS, passport, driving licence and immigration systems. Deliberately using an unauthorised name or concealing a former identity from the relevant authorities should be a criminal offence.

This is not about preventing rehabilitation. It is about ensuring rehabilitation cannot become reinvention at the expense of victims and public safety.

A new name must never provide a clean slate for a serious criminal history.

Please sign this petition and call on the Government to close the remaining loopholes.

Why this matters to me

I met a man through a professional business networking group. He attended under a different name from the one under which he had previously been convicted.

He had received an eight-year prison sentence, had been released on licence after four years and remained subject to sex-offender notification requirements indefinitely. Yet none of us in that networking room knew any of this.

When I searched the name he was using, nothing appeared. He presented himself as an ordinary business professional and subsequently became my client.

That networking group had previously been a safe space for me—a place where I could grow my business, support other business owners and build trusted professional relationships. What followed destroyed that sense of safety.

I reported serious allegations to the police. Those allegations did not result in a conviction, so I am not presenting them here as proven judicial findings or using this petition to retry my individual case.

What I can speak about is what the experience did to me.

I stopped networking for five years. I lost a major way of promoting and growing my business. My confidence in selling was severely damaged, and meetings alone with male clients no longer felt safe. The professional environment in which I had previously thrived became something I feared.

As a single parent, that damage was not merely professional. It affected my confidence in earning the money needed to support myself and my little boy.

Had I been able to connect the name he was using with the name under which he had been convicted, I would have had information that was directly relevant to my safety. I could have made an informed decision about whether to work with him or allow him into my professional life.

I might never have taken him on as a client.

This is why simply notifying the police of a name change is not enough. The police and probation may have known both identities. I did not. Neither did the other people whose trust he was able to gain.

Public protection cannot exist only inside confidential police and probation files. An offender’s opportunity to rebuild their life should never depend upon other people being kept unaware of information that could protect them.

This is not about vengeance. It is about safe spaces, informed choices and preventing future harm. No offender’s fresh start should come at the cost of a potential victim’s safety, livelihood and future.