On 16 April 2026, the Inquiry held a hearing on the National Police Chiefs Council's (NPCC) position regarding the UCPI. It was held in closed, but the Chair issued a public ruling afterwards.
The NPCC oversees Operation Elter, which coordinates from the police's side, the investigation into the National Public Order Intelligence Unit. This was because the NPOIU drew on police officers seconded from multiple police forces, as it operated at a national level and came under the aegis of the predecessor organisation, the Association of Chief Police Officers' Terrorism and Allied Matters Committee (ACPO TAM).
According to Mitting's Ruling, issued in the aftermath of the hearing, the NPCC were planning to restrict its involvement in reviewing material relating to the UCPI to simply issues of state tactics and the public interest. It is pulling back from its coordination role, which means that the burden will fall back on the individual police forces to whom the NPOIU officers were deployed. It notes that each NPOIU undercover fell under the responsibility of at least two, and sometimes three, distinct police forces.
Mitting concluded:
Each police force will, therefore, be required to perform the task which the NPCC has hitherto performed collaboratively for them. This is a task for which they are unlikely to be equipped and will involve them examining numerous documents which have nothing to do with their forces or with the discharge of their responsibilities. At a minimum, the security of the exercise hitherto performed with the aid of the NPCC will be diminished and the cost and time required to fulfil it greatly increased. I do, therefore, urge the NPCC to reconsider and, if not,then alert the chief officers of police forces concerned to the need to set up promptly an alternative means of doing that which the NPCC has hitherto performed. (emphasis added)
The NPCC's decision is likely to severely impact Tranche 4 preparations, adding to the considerable delays to the Inquiry already in place due to the security-checking process for the police's benefit.