Excavations near a road
article 82(10) of The Roads (Northern Ireland) Order 1993
- Revoked
- Strict liability
- Summary only
- Housing, planning, heritage and land
The provision has been revoked and no saving provision preserving liability for earlier conduct was found.
What the provision says
10 Any person who—
a carries out any excavation in pursuance of
a consent given under paragraph (2)(a); and
b fails to comply with any condition subject to which that consent was given, shall be guilty of an offence and 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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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 a condition of a licence, permit or consent
- Fault element
- Strict liability
- Burden of proof
- No statutory defence — prosecution proves everything
The prosecution must prove that the conduct happened. This is a strict liability offence as drafted: the provision uses no word of intention, knowledge, recklessness or negligence, so there is no need to show that a person meant to do it, knew about it, or was careless.
Intention, knowledge and carelessness are irrelevant to guilt. They may still matter a great deal to sentence.
The provision states no defence, so the prosecution bears the burden on every element of the offence.
Classifier’s reasoning: no word of intention, knowledge, recklessness or negligence in the offence or its provision.
What would breach article 82(10)?
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.
- Holding a valid licence but doing the thing it allows outside the hours, place or limits its conditions set under the Roads (Northern Ireland) Order 1993.
- 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
- 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.
-
Environmental offences: definitive guideline
Magistrates' courts and the Crown Court in England and Wales · in force from 1 July 2014
Covers unauthorised or harmful deposit, treatment or disposal of waste, illegal discharges to air, land and water, and the equivalent offences committed by organisations. It is the guideline that introduced turnover bands for corporate fines, so the size of the defendant company is a starting point rather than a mitigating detail.
-
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 Competition Act 1998 (Transitional, Consequential and Supplemental Provisions) Order 2000
- Revoked on
- 1 March 2000
- Made
- 16 December 1993
- In force from
- 17 February 1994
- Extent
- Not stated
How this was established: the instrument was revoked by a later instrument found in this corpus.
What the instrument is for
(This note is not part of the Order) — the explanatory note published with the instrument, © Crown copyright.
This Order re-enacts with amendments the Roads (Northern Ireland) Order 1980 and other related legislation relating to the construction, improvement, maintenance and protection of roads. The Order also makes new provision for road ferry services.
Read the full note and every offence in this instrument
Other offences in the same instrument
- Charges for road ferry servicesarticle 101(5)
- Byelaws in connection with road ferry servicesarticle 102(2)
- Extraordinary trafficarticle 11(3)
- Power to obtain information as to ownership of landarticle 118(2)
- Power to enter on landarticle 119(7)
- Power to enter land for construction of temporary worksarticle 120(4)
- Restriction of access, etc. in connection with special roadsarticle 18(3)
- Restrictions on use of special roadsarticle 20(4)
- Prohibition and control of advertising, etc. on or near special roadsarticle 21(1)
- Collection of tollsarticle 36(3)
- Refusal or failure to pay tollsarticle 37(1)
- Obstruction of, interference with, or discharge of material into, a road drain, etcarticle 46(1)
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
- This provision on legislation.gov.uk The authoritative text. Check it before relying on anything here.
- The Roads (Northern Ireland) Order 1993 Every offence this instrument creates, and its explanatory note
- Housing, planning, heritage and landOther offences on the same subject
- Offences created in 1993