Offences relating to registers
article 43(3) of Births and Deaths Registration (Northern Ireland) Order 1976
- Revoked
- Objective fault
- Summary only
- Miscellaneous
The provision has been revoked and no saving provision preserving liability for earlier conduct was found.
What the provision says
3 Any person who, having the custody of any register, negligently loses or damages it or allows it to be damaged shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on summary conviction to
a fine not exceeding level
3 on the standard scale.
Text as made, from legislation.gov.uk. © Crown copyright, reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0. This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.
Who it binds, and what has to be proved
- Binds
- a person
- Conduct
- breaching the provision
- Fault element
- Objective fault
- Burden of proof
- No statutory defence — prosecution proves everything
The prosecution must prove that the conduct happened and that it fell below the standard the provision sets. That is an objective test - what a reasonable person in the same position would have done, not what this defendant actually thought.
What a person personally believed or intended is not the question; the standard is what was reasonable.
The provision states no defence, so the prosecution bears the burden on every element of the offence.
Classifier’s reasoning: objective standard in the offence-creating words: negligently.
What would breach article 43(3)?
These are illustrations, not law. They are generated from the provision’s own words to show the shape of the offence. Whether any particular conduct is caught depends on the full text, on any amendment since, and on the facts.
- On these words an offence is committed where a person negligently loses or damages it or allows it to be damaged.
- Doing what the provision prohibits, or failing to do what it requires under the Births and Deaths Registration (Northern Ireland) Order 1976.
Penalty
- Mode of trial
- Summary only — tried in a magistrates’ court
- Maximum fine
- £1,000
- Standard scale
- Level 3
- Maximum prison (summary)
- Not determined
in Northern Ireland a reference to a level is construed as referring to the standard scale as it currently stands (Fines and Penalties (NI) Order 1984 art.5(3)), not as it stood when the instrument was made.
Sentencing
Offences of this kind are usually sentenced under the guidelines below. This is a mapping by subject, not a finding about this provision, and the links go to a search of the Sentencing Council’s own site.
-
Reduction in sentence for a guilty plea: definitive guideline
All courts in England and Wales · in force from 1 June 2017
The sliding scale of credit for pleading guilty, from one third at the first stage of proceedings downwards.
-
General guideline: overarching principles
All courts in England and Wales · in force from 1 October 2019
The guideline a court uses when there is no offence-specific guideline, which is the position for the overwhelming majority of offences created by statutory instrument. It sets out how culpability and harm are assessed from first principles.
-
Totality: definitive guideline
All courts in England and Wales
How to sentence more than one offence at once so that the total is just and proportionate - frequently in point here, because regulatory prosecutions commonly charge several breaches of the same instrument.
Prosecution figures
No published per-offence figure was found for this provision, and it could not be matched to a Ministry of Justice offence code. Offences created by statutory instrument very largely do not have one. Absence of a figure is not evidence that the offence is unused.
Status and lifecycle
- Current status
- Revoked
- Revoked by
- The Coroners (Practice and Procedure) (Amendment) Rules (Northern Ireland) 1980
- Revoked on
- 1 February 1981
- Made
- 2 July 1976
- In force from
- Not determined
- Extent
- N.I.
How this was established: the instrument was revoked by a later instrument found in this corpus.
Other offences in the same instrument
- Special provisions as to still-birthsarticle 15(11)
- Disclosure of informationarticle 17(2)
- Information about burialsarticle 30(3)
- Any registrar who refuses, or, without reasonable cause, fails to register any birth or death or particulars…article 43(1)
- Any person who registers or causes to be registered any birth in contravention of Article 13 or death in…article 43(2)
- Refusal to give informationarticle 44(1)
- Refusal to give informationarticle 44(2)
- Refusal to give informationarticle 44(3)
- Forgery, etc., of documents under this Orderarticle 45(1)
- Delivery up of books, etc., on ceasing to hold officearticle 9(2)
How this was identified as an offence
Everything above rests on the judgement that this provision creates a criminal offence, rather than mentioning one. That judgement is made by rule, from the words of the provision, and this is the rule that made it — with a confidence of 0.92.
- Basis
- the provision says a person is “guilty of an offence”; the provision states liability on summary conviction; the provision states a penalty in older drafting
- Confidence
- 0.92 of 1.00
A provision that states a penalty for an offence created elsewhere can read very like one that creates an offence, and the rules can mistake the one for the other. If the text quoted above sets a penalty for something made an offence by another provision, treat the classification on this page with that in mind, and read the instrument.
Check the source
- This provision on legislation.gov.uk The authoritative text. Check it before relying on anything here.
- Births and Deaths Registration (Northern Ireland) Order 1976 Every offence this instrument creates, and its explanatory note
- MiscellaneousOther offences on the same subject
- Offences created in 1976