UK Offence Report

Penalties for non-compliance

regulation 6(1) of The Bank Accounts Directive (Miscellaneous Banks) Regulations 1991

The provision has been revoked and no saving provision preserving liability for earlier conduct was found.

What the provision says

1 If the directors of

a body of persons to which these Regulations apply fail to prepare, or (in the case of the auditors' report) fail to cause to be prepared, the accounts required by Regulation 4(1) within the period referred to in Regulation 4(2), every person who, immediately before the end of the period referred to in Regulation 4(2), was

a director of the body is guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to

a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum.

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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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 6(1)?

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 Bank Accounts Directive (Miscellaneous Banks) Regulations 1991, 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
£2,000
Maximum prison (summary)
Not determined

expressed as the statutory maximum (the prescribed sum): the same words mean £5,000 in England and Wales and £10,000 in Scotland.

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 Bank Accounts Directive (Miscellaneous Banks) Regulations 2008 (revoked)
Revoked on
6 April 2008
Made
1 December 1991
In force from
2 December 1991
Extent
E+W+S

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 Regulations) — the explanatory note published with the instrument, © Crown copyright.

These Regulations implement Council Directive 86/635/EEC Official Journal No L372 of 31.12.1986 pages 1-17 on the Annual Accounts and Consolidated Accounts of Banks and Other Financial Institutions, in so far as that Directive is applicable to bodies corporate or unincorporate other than (a) bodies corporate to which Part VII of the Companies Act 1985 (“the 1985 Act”) applies and (b) building societies. (The Companies Act 1985 (Bank Accounts) Regulations 1991 (S.I. 1991/2705) implement Directive 86/635/EEC in respect of bodies corporate to which Part VII of the 1985 Act applies. Separate Regulations will deal with building societies.) The scope of application of the Regulations is set out in Regulation 3. They apply, in effect, to certain institutions authorised under the Banking Act 1987 to carry on a deposit taking business which were incorporated or formed by or under Public General Acts which predate modern legislation governing the legal forms in which business may be carried on. The directors of bodies of persons to which the Regulations apply are required by Regulation 4 to prepare accounts and a directors' report, and to obtain an auditors' report on such accounts, in accordance with the provisions of Part VII of the 1985 Act which are applicable to banking companies and groups, subject to certain modifications set out in the Schedule to the Regulations. The Schedule disapplies requirements of Part VII which do not derive from the European Community Directives on Accounts. Regulation 5 requires the documents prepared under Regulation 4 to be made available for inspection without charge at the body’s principal place of business within Great Britain; the documents are also to be those to which section 45 of the Banking Act 1987 applies. That section requires the accounts of an institution authorised under that Act to be open to inspection at any of its branches. Regulations 6 and 7 impose criminal penalties for failure to comply with the Regulations. Regulation 8 permits the directors of a body of persons to which the Regulations apply not to prepare accounts and a directors' report (and obtain an auditors' report on the accounts)under the Regulations for financial years commencing on a date prior to 23rd December 1992. This transitional provision mirrors the transitional provision contained in the Companies Act 1985 (Bank Accounts) Regulations 1991.

Read the full note and every offence in this instrument

What Parliament said

Mentions of this instrument in Hansard. Parliamentary material is reused under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0.

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