Miscellaneous amendments to sentencing guidelines 2026

Overview

What is this consultation about?

The Sentencing Council has built up a large body of sentencing guidelines and accompanying materials that are in use in courts throughout England and Wales. Over time guidelines require updating because users have pointed out issues (often using the feedback function on all guidelines) or case law or new legislation may render aspects of guidelines out of date. The Council therefore holds an annual consultation on miscellaneous amendments to guidelines and the materials that accompany them. This is the sixth of these annual consultations in which the Council seeks the views of guideline users on proposals to make amendments to existing guidelines and to add some guidelines for motoring offences.

The proposed changes relate to magistrates’ courts and the Crown Court.

What is the Sentencing Council?

The Sentencing Council is the independent body responsible for developing sentencing guidelines which courts in England and Wales must follow when passing a sentence. The Council consults on its proposed guidelines before they come into force and on any proposed changes to existing guidelines.

Summary of the proposed changes

Matters relevant primarily to magistrates’ courts:

• Firearms – minimum term for under 18s: clarifying the approach to be taken in Youth courts
• Use of mobile phone while driving a goods vehicle: increasing the starting point
• Unauthorised entry to football matches: adding this offence to the existing Football related offences guideline
• Breach of post-sentence supervision/ Breach of supervision default order guideline: removing the guideline
• Maximum aggregate sentences in magistrates’ courts: providing an annex to the Totality guideline setting these out

Matters relevant to magistrates’ courts and the Crown Court:

• Causing intentional harassment, alarm or distress to a person because of their sex, or presumed sex: adding this new offence to the existing Disorderly behaviour with intent to cause harassment, alarm or distress/ Racially or religiously aggravated disorderly behaviour with intent to cause harassment, alarm or distress guideline
• Time spent on bail but not on a qualifying curfew: adding guidance to the final step of relevant guidelines
• Verification reports: adding information on these to the Imposition of community and custodial sentences guideline
• Grooming and exploitation: adding new aggravating and mitigating factors relating to grooming of others into criminal behaviour
• Sentences involving two or more punitive elements: clarifying the approach to be taken
• Sentencing children and young people guideline: adding reference to the offence specific guidelines and other relevant information to the guideline
• Racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage: removing the aggravated offence from the Criminal damage (other than by fire) value not exceeding £5,000 guideline in line with recent case law
• Domestic abuse protection order on conviction: providing guidance on these ancillary orders
• Election disqualification orders: providing guidance on these ancillary orders

Matters relevant primarily to the Crown Court:

• Slavery and trafficking reparation order: clarifying that compensation for harm to the victim covers physical and psychological harm as well as any financial loss
• Dangerousness: providing some additional information at the dangerousness step of guidelines

Additional information and response paper

Changes not subject to consultation

Annexed to the consultation document is a list of changes made to guidelines and supporting materials on 6 August to correct errors, or to reflect changes in legislation. The annex also sets out the changes that will be made to guidelines on 5 October 2026 to reflect the introduction of a requirement for the sentencer to state when the court is of the view that an offence involved domestic abuse.

Following the conclusion of this consultation exercise, a response will be published at: www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk

We will treat all responses as public documents in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and we may attribute comments and include a list of all respondents’ names in any final report we publish. If you wish to submit a confidential response, you should contact us before sending the response. PLEASE NOTE – We will disregard automatic confidentiality statements generated by an IT system.

In addition, responses may be shared with the Justice Committee of the House of Commons.

Our privacy notice sets out the standards that you can expect from the Sentencing Council when we request or hold personal information (personal data) about you; how you can get access to a copy of your personal data; and what you can do if you think the standards are not being met.