People carry two opposite beliefs about this, and both are wrong. One is that you may do essentially anything to somebody who has broken into your house. The other is that defending yourself will land you in more trouble than the intruder.
The actual position in England and Wales is somewhere between, and it is more accommodating than the second belief suggests. It is worth knowing, because knowing it removes a source of hesitation and of panic.
This is not legal advice
The basic position
You may use reasonable force to defend yourself, to defend somebody else, to protect property, or to prevent a crime.
That comes from two places: the common law of self defence, and section 3 of the Criminal Law Act 1967, which permits such force as is reasonable in the circumstances in the prevention of crime.
The whole question is what counts as reasonable, and the law approaches that in a way that is more sympathetic to a frightened person than most people expect.
Reasonable force
Reasonableness is judged on the circumstances as you saw them, not with the benefit of hindsight, calm reflection or a courtroom.
The law explicitly recognises that a person acting in self defence:
- Cannot be expected to weigh to a nicety the exact measure of necessary action.
- May have acted honestly and instinctively, and that this is strong evidence that the force was reasonable.
- Is not required to have got it exactly right.
Two tests, depending on where you are:
That difference is deliberate, and it is the householder provision inserted by the Crime and Courts Act 2013. It gives a person in their own home more latitude than the same person would have in the street.
Grossly disproportionate is a high bar, and it is worth being clear about what it is not. It does not license retaliation once a threat has ended, and it does not license doing whatever you like to a burglar.
Honest belief
You are judged on the facts as you honestly believed them to be, even if that belief turns out to have been mistaken.
If you genuinely believed you were about to be attacked, that belief forms the basis of the assessment, even if it later turns out you were wrong about what was happening.
Two limits worth knowing:
- The belief must be honest. Whether it was reasonable is evidence of whether it was genuinely held, but an honest mistaken belief can still be relied on.
- A mistaken belief brought about by voluntary intoxication does not count. Being drunk is not a route to a wider defence.
You do not have to wait to be hit. A pre-emptive action can be lawful self defence where you honestly believed an attack was imminent. You are not required to let the first blow land.
No duty to retreat
There is no legal duty to retreat before defending yourself.
Whether you could have retreated may be considered as one factor in whether what you did was reasonable, and it is not a requirement, and failing to retreat does not by itself make your actions unlawful.
That said, and this is the practical rather than the legal point: leaving is still nearly always the better outcome. The law not requiring you to leave is different from leaving being a bad idea. See avoiding trouble and calming it down.
Householder cases
The provision that applies specifically in your own home.
For it to apply, broadly:
- The force must be used in or partly in a building that is a dwelling, or in a part of a building that is living accommodation.
- You must not be a trespasser there yourself.
- You must have believed the other person was a trespasser.
- The force must be used in self defence rather than, for example, purely to protect property.
Where it applies, the force is only unlawful if it was grossly disproportionate.
What this does in practice is recognise something obvious: a person woken in the night by an intruder in their home is frightened, has no time, does not know how many people there are or what they intend, and cannot be held to the standard of somebody deciding calmly.
What it does not do is provide a licence. Once the threat has ended, force is no longer self defence.
Where it stops
Weapons
Afterwards
If something has happened, the immediate steps matter.
- Ring 999. Do it yourself, immediately, and do not wait for somebody else to. The person who calls is the person giving the first account.
- Say what happened plainly. That you were attacked or that somebody was in your home, that you defended yourself, and that somebody is injured if they are.
- Get first aid to anybody who needs it, including the other person, if it is safe to do so. See wound care and CPR.
- Do not tidy up, move things or clean.
- Write down what you remember, as soon as you can, in your own words with the time on it. Memory after a frightening event degrades quickly and is patchy.
- Get a solicitor before giving a detailed account. You are entitled to free legal advice at a police station. Asking for it is normal and is not an admission.
- Expect to be treated as part of an investigation. That is how it works when somebody is hurt, and it does not mean you are being accused.
- Look after the household afterwards. A frightening incident affects everybody in the house, including anybody who was not there.