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Policing minister Sarah Jones gave the confirmation in a written parliamentary answer on 9 July. It is the clearest signal yet of where the Home Office’s long-promised review of firearms licensing has settled, and one the trade should read carefully: any tightening of private transfers reshapes the second-hand market in which every dealer operates.
What did the policing minister say?
Ruth Cadbury, the Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for Brentford and Isleworth, asked the Home Secretary how many forged shotgun certificates had been used to buy shotguns in England over the past five years, and what steps were being taken to reduce their use. Ms Jones replied that the data “is not collected centrally”, and added: “The law is clear on the sales of shotguns that a purchaser must hold the appropriate firearms certificate and transactions must comply with the relevant legal requirements and police procedures in place. The Government is considering what further action may be needed to strengthen the controls on the private sale of firearms and shotguns by licence holders.”
What is the consequence for dealers?
Private sales between certificate holders are a routine and lawful part of the shooting world, from a shotgun changing hands between club members to a rifle sold on when a stalker upgrades. Any strengthening of the rules would reach beyond dealers and into those everyday transfers, and how sales are verified between private individuals is the obvious gap a consultation would examine.
The written answer does not say what form new controls could take, and no proposals have been published. For the trade, the questions to watch when they are published will be where any new verification duty falls and what that means for transfer business through the counter. The forged-certificate question sits behind the signal: with no central data, the scale of misuse is unknown.
The signal also comes with firearms licensing already in flux. Sound moderators were removed from licensing control on 29 June under the Crime and Policing Act 2026, certificate numbers in England and Wales are falling, and the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) has renewed its call for a single national licensing authority to replace force-by-force administration. Each strand touches the dealer’s compliance load, and a consultation that gathers them together would be the largest licensing event for the trade in years.
What is the compliance timeline?
Ministers said in January that a consultation on the firearms licensing system would be published shortly. It has yet to appear, the Home Office has not given a date, and the 9 July answer suggests private sales will be within its scope. Until proposals are published there is nothing for a dealer to change: private sales remain lawful where the buyer holds the appropriate certificate and the transaction follows the legal requirements and police procedures that apply.
What happens next
The consultation remains the document to watch, and this title will report its scope the day it opens. The full written answers, written questions 16451 and 16452, are linked below.
