UK Offence Report

Penalties

regulation 16(2) of The Merchant Shipping (Accident Reporting and Investigation) Regulations 1994

The provision has been revoked and no saving provision preserving liability for earlier conduct was found.

What the provision says

2 If any person fails without reasonable cause to comply with regulation 7 above, he shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum and on conviction on indictment to a fine.

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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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
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 16(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 Merchant Shipping (Accident Reporting and Investigation) Regulations 1994.

Penalty

Mode of trial
Either way — magistrates’ court or Crown Court
Maximum fine
£1,000
Standard scale
Level 3
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
Revoked
Revoked by
The Merchant Shipping (Accident Reporting and Investigation) Regulations 1999
Revoked on
12 October 1999
Made
28 July 1994
In force from
26 August 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 Regulations) — the explanatory note published with the instrument, © Crown copyright.

These Regulations replace the Merchant Shipping (Accident Investigation) Regulations 1989. They include, with amendments, the provisions for the reporting and investigation of marine accidents contained in those Regulations and also those in the Merchant Shipping (Safety Officials and Reporting of Accidents and Dangerous Occurrences) Regulations 1982 and the Fishing Vessels (Reporting of Accidents) Regulations 1985. The latter Regulations are revoked; the former are amended separately by the Merchant Shipping (Safety Officials and Reporting of Accidents and Dangerous Occurrences) (Amendment) Regulations 1994 to remove those provisions now covered by these Regulations. The principal effect is to incorporate the various requirements in one set of Regulations and to remove the differences between the provisions relating to merchant ships and those for fishing vessels. Some revision has been made to the requirements, chiefly for clarification. The main changes are: a the requirement for dangerous occurrences to be reported, previously only applicable to merchant ships, is now extended to fishing vessels; b the exclusion of non-UK ships from certain of the requirements no longer applies if they are within a UK port when the accident occurs or are operating as passenger vessels to or from a port in the UK; c the previous bar on publication of Reports if a prosecution or Inquiry into Conduct is contemplated is changed to a discretionary provision; d provision is made for the Inspector’s findings to be presented at an inquest or fatal accident inquiry, and in appropriate cases for this procedure to be a substitute for written consultation with criticized parties.

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