UK Offence Report

Penalty for contravention of ASOR, the Council Regulations or the Commission Regulation

regulation 19(2) of The Road Transport (International Passenger Services) Regulations 1984

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

2 A person shall be guilty of an offence under this Regulation if, without reasonable excuse, he uses a vehicle for ASOR regulated or Community regulated carriage by road, or causes or permits a vehicle to be so used, to provide a service for the carriage of passengers such as is mentioned in paragraph 1 of, Article 2 of ASOR or Article 3 of Council Regulation No. 117/66 when there is not duly and correctly completed for the vehicle a passenger waybill, or when the top copy of the passenger way bill is not kept on the vehicle throughout the journey to which it refers, as required, in the case of a vehicle being used for ASOR regulated carriage, by Articles 7 and 8 of ASOR and, in the case of a vehicle being used for Community regulated carriage, by Articles 2 and 3 of Council Regulation No. 1016/68.

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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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
Strict liability
Burden of proof
An element of the offence, for the prosecution to prove

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.

“Without reasonable excuse” here is an element of the offence rather than a defence, so its absence is for the prosecution to prove (R v Charles [2009] EWCA Crim 1570).

Classifier’s reasoning: no word of intention, knowledge, recklessness or negligence in the offence or its provision; qualified by reasonable excuse (an element; prosecution disproves once raised); other provisions of the same instrument use a mens rea word while this one does not (the Cundy v Le Cocq contrast).

The defence, as drafted

son shall be guilty of an offence under this Regulation if, without reasonable excuse, he uses a vehicle for ASOR regulated or Community regulated carriage by road, or causes or permits a vehicle to be so used, to provide a service for the carriage of passengers such as is mentioned in paragraph 1 of, Article 2 of ASOR or Article 3 of Council

What would breach regulation 19(2)?

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. Doing what the provision prohibits, or failing to do what it requires under the Road Transport (International Passenger Services) Regulations 1984.

Penalty

Mode of trial
Summary only — tried in a magistrates’ court
Maximum fine
£400
Maximum prison (summary)
Not determined

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
25 May 1984
In force from
1 July 1984
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 consolidate, with the Regulations which amended them, the Road Transport (International Passenger Services) Regulations 1980, and make further amendments. The principal effects of the further amendments are— to implement in relation to Great Britain the Agreement on the International Carriage of Passengers by Road by means of Occasional Coach and Bus Services (ASOR), which requires the Member States of the European Economic Community and the other States which are parties to that agreement to facilitate the operation of such services, and Council Regulation (EEC) No. 56/83 of 19th December 1982 concerning the implementation of that Agreement. (Regulations 2(1)(b), (c) and (d), 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20 and 22); to provide for the issue of the control document for occasional services, specified in Article 7 of ASOR or in Article 2 of Commission Regulation 1016/68, by the Bus and Coach Council (Regulations 13(2) and 15(1)) and to require applicants for the control document to pay to the Bus and Coach Council a fee of such amount as may, with the approval of the Secretary of State, be required by the Council (Regulation 14(5)); to enable an examiner (as defined in Regulation 2(1)(h)) to require the production, and to inspect and copy, the model document with stiff green covers required to be carried on a vehicle used to provide occasional services and to detain the vehicle for such time as is required for the purposes of inspecting and copying the document (Regulation 16(3)(d)); and to increase from £200 to £400 the maximum penalty on summary conviction of an offence under Regulation 19 and 20 of these Regulations.

Read the full note and every offence in this instrument

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