UK Offence Report

Offences, penalty and forfeiture

regulation 3 of The Customs and Excise (Transit) Regulations 1993

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 In the event of any contravention or failure to comply with—

a any relevant Community provision, or

b any requirement or condition imposed by or under any such provision, person then in charge of the goods shall each be liable on summary conviction to

a penalty of level

5 on the standard scale and any goods in respect of which the offence was committed shall be liable to forfeiture.

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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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 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. Holding a valid licence but doing the thing it allows outside the hours, place or limits its conditions set under the Customs and Excise (Transit) Regulations 1993.
  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
Summary only — tried in a magistrates’ court
Maximum fine
£5,000
Standard scale
Level 5
Maximum prison (summary)
Not determined

this is the level 5 value when the instrument came into force (1993-06-23); the standard scale is keyed to the date the offence was committed, and for conduct today the same words mean an unlimited fine.

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
26 May 1993
In force from
23 June 1993
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.

The making of these Regulations is consequent on amendment to EC Regulations dealing with Community transit and the EEC-EFTA Convention on common transit. Penalties and forfeiture are created for contravention of these procedures. These two transit procedures have hitherto been dealt with in separate statutory instruments: the Customs and Excise (Community Transit) (No. 2) Regulations 1987 and the Customs and Excise (Common Transit) Regulations 1988, both revoked by these Regulations. The penalty, proceedings and forfeiture procedure are governed by the Customs and Excise Management Act 1979. The Schedules to the 1987 and 1988 Regulations are replaced by the Schedule to these Regulations to take account of:— the repeal of Council Regulation (EEC) No. 222/77 and its replacement by Council Regulation (EEC) No. 2726/90 ; the repeal of Commission Regulation (EEC) No. 1062/87 and its replacement by Commission Regulation (EEC) No. 1214/92 ; the repeal of Commission Regulation (EEC) No. 2823/87 and its replacement by Commission Regulation (EEC) No. 3566/92 ; the substitution of new Appendices to the EEC-EFTA Convention governing common transit procedure . Regulation 5 reflects the arrangements which have been made to deal with the transition from the procedures governed by the replaced EC Regulations and Convention Appendices.

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 0.72.

Basis
the provision states liability on summary conviction; the provision states a penalty in older drafting
Confidence
0.72 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