UK Offence Report

Amendment of the Register Regulations

regulation 3 of The Occupational and Personal Pension Schemes (Penalties) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2000

This offence was read from the text as made, and no revised version was available, so a later revocation could not be ruled out. Check the current text at legislation.gov.uk.

What the provision says

3 For regulation

5 of the Register Regulations (offences and penalties) there shall be substituted the following regulation— 5

1 Where any person, without reasonable cause, fails to comply with the duty imposed under regulation 6(2) he is guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to

a fine not exceeding level

5 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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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
failing to do something the instrument requires
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 regulation 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.

  1. Not doing what the provision requires under the Occupational and Personal Pension Schemes (Penalties) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2000, by the time it requires it to be done.
  2. Doing it, but not in the manner or to the standard the instrument specifies.

Penalty

Mode of trial
Summary only — tried in a magistrates’ court
Maximum fine
£5,000
Standard scale
Level 5
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.

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
Status not determined
Made
21 March 2000
In force from
3 April 2000
Extent
Not stated

How this was established: read from the text as made; no revised version available, so later revocation could not be ruled out.

What the instrument is for

(This note is not part of the Regulations.) — the explanatory note published with the instrument, © Crown copyright.

These Regulations are made under the Pension Schemes (Northern Ireland) Act 1993 and the Pensions (Northern Ireland) Order 1995 (“the Order”). Regulation 1 provides for citation, commencement and interpretation. Regulation 2 amends the Occupational Pension Schemes (Requirement to obtain Audited Accounts and a Statement from the Auditor) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1997 so as to apply a civil penalty under Article 10 of the Order (power of the Occupational Pensions Regulatory Authority (“the Authority”) to impose civil penalties), instead of a criminal penalty, in respect of any failure to comply with the requirement to obtain accounts audited by the auditor of the scheme or a statement from the auditor about contributions to the scheme. It also inserts regulation 2(4) into those Regulations under which the trustees of the scheme are liable to the imposition of a prohibition order under Article 3 of the Order in respect of any such failure. Regulation 3 amends the Register of Occupational and Personal Pension Schemes Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1997 so as to provide that, for the future, a breach of the requirements imposed by regulation 2, 3 or 6(3) of those Regulations renders the trustees or managers of the scheme liable to the imposition of a civil penalty by the Authority instead of a criminal penalty. As these Regulations, in so far as they are made under Part II of the Order, make in relation to Northern Ireland only provision corresponding to provision contained in regulations made by the Secretary of State for Social Security in relation to Great Britain, the requirement for consultation under Article 117(1) of the Order does not apply by virtue of paragraph (2)(e) of that Article.

Read the full note and every offence in this 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