UK Offence Report

General specifications of equipment for use for trade

article 12(4) of Weights and Measures (Northern Ireland) Order 1981

The provision has been revoked and no saving provision preserving liability for earlier conduct was found.

What the provision says

4 Where, in the case of any particular equipment, it appears to the Department that there are special circumstances which make it impracticable or unnecessary for that equipment to comply with any particular requirement of any specification prescribed under this Article, the Department may exempt that equipment from that requirement subject to compliance with such conditions, if any, as it thinks fit; and if any person knowingly contravenes any condition imposed with respect to any equipment by virtue of this paragraph, he shall be guilty of an offence and the equipment shall be liable to be forfeited.

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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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 a condition of a licence, permit or consent
Fault element
Requires proof of a state of mind
Burden of proof
No statutory defence — prosecution proves everything

The prosecution must prove both that the conduct happened and that it was done with the state of mind the provision names (knowingly).

The provision states no defence, so the prosecution bears the burden on every element of the offence.

Classifier’s reasoning: mens rea word in the offence-creating words: knowingly.

What would breach article 12(4)?

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.

  1. Holding a valid licence but doing the thing it allows outside the hours, place or limits its conditions set under the Weights and Measures (Northern Ireland) Order 1981.
  2. Failing to do something a condition positively requires - a record, a notification, a monitoring step - even though the licensed activity itself is carried on properly.

Penalty

Mode of trial
Not determined
Maximum fine
Not determined
Maximum prison (summary)
Not determined

no penalty is stated in this instrument; it may be in the enabling Act, or in a general penalties provision this pass did not connect to the offence.

No penalty was determined from this instrument. It may be in the enabling Act, or in a general penalties provision this pass did not connect to the offence. Absence of a figure here is not evidence that the offence carries no penalty.

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.

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 Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008
Revoked on
26 May 2008
Made
18 February 1981
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

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”
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