Miscellaneous amendments to sentencing guidelines 2024

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(often using the feedback function on all guidelines) or case law or new legislation may render aspects of guidelines out of date.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 fourth of these annual consultations in which the Council seeks the views of guideline users on proposals to make amendments to existing guidelines and supporting materials.

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:

• Supplementary information: new guidance on setting a fine for those on a variable income        
• New guideline for the offence of using or keeping heavy goods vehicle if levy not paid
• Careless Driving: revising the guideline to change the factors to align with newer guidelines and replace reference to ‘pedestrians’ with ‘vulnerable road users’
• Drive otherwise than in accordance with a licence: add clarification to the guideline regarding offenders who are entitled to a licence but do not hold one
• Allocation guideline: various changes including changing the name of the guideline; updating the legislative references; changing ‘youths’ to ‘children’; clarifying wording relating to community orders; adding a reference to the Criminal Practice Directions in the Committal for sentence section; and providing additional information by way of an Annex

Matters relevant to magistrates’ courts and the Crown Court:

• Sentencing children and young people guideline: changing references to ‘children and young people’ to ‘children’ in both the title of this (and other guidelines relating to sentencing under 18s) and in the text of all sentencing guidelines; and adding a reference to sentencing young adults at the beginning of the guideline
• Assistance to the prosecution: adding a dropdown to guidelines summarising the approach to be taken.
• Sentencing very large organisations: adding some guidance on sentencing very large organisations to relevant guidelines
• Revenue fraud: adding a sentence table for offences where the maximum sentence has increased from 7 years to 14 years.
• Standard language in guidelines: establishing a standard form of wording in guidelines
• Totality: adding further guidance to the Totality guideline
• Shop theft and Benefit fraud guidelines: adding an expanded explanation to the mitigating factor ‘offender experiencing exceptional hardship’
• Wording relating to community orders in guidelines: clarifying the wording relating to sex offending and adding a note relating to committal to the Crown Court
• Wording on mandatory minimum sentences: adding a reference stating where the burden of showing that exceptional circumstances exist lies
• Domestic abuse: changing the name of the overarching guideline, rewording the aggravating factor in offence specific guidelines and adding that factor to more guidelines

Other changes

In addition to the changes consulted on, the Council has made other changes to guidelines which, while not requiring consultation, it was felt should be drawn to the attention of those responding to this consultation.

A list of these changes is provided in an Annex (see document below or at the end of the consultation).

Additional information and response paper

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.