UK Offence Report

Penalties

regulation 36(1) of The Merchant Shipping (Prevention of Oil Pollution) Regulations 1996

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

1 If any ship fails to comply with any requirement of these Regulations (other than regulations 12, 13 and 16) the owner and the master of the ship shall each be guilty of an offence and punishable on summary conviction by a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum and on conviction on indictment by 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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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 master
Conduct
failing to comply with a notice or direction
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 master 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 36(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. Being served with a notice under the Merchant Shipping (Prevention of Oil Pollution) Regulations 1996 and doing nothing by the date it specifies.
  2. Doing part of what the notice requires, where it required all of it.
  3. Disagreeing with the notice and ignoring it, rather than using whatever appeal the instrument provides.

Penalty

Mode of trial
Either way — magistrates’ court or Crown Court
Maximum fine
£5,000
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
Status not determined
Made
19 August 1996
In force from
17 September 1996
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 the Merchant Shipping (Prevention of Oil Pollution) Regulations 1983 and subsequent amendments. Technical details are now included in a Merchant Shipping Notice (No. 1643/MARPOL 1). In addition the Regulations include a number of new provisions: the Regulations incorporate the most recent amendments to Annex I of the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution by Sea 1973, as amended by the Protocol of 1978 to that Convention (MARPOL), which were adopted at the 36th session of the Marine Environmental Committee (MEPC) to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) in November 1994. The amendements which enter into force on 3 March 1996 provide a legal basis for port states to carry out inspections of shipboard operational procedures (regulation 34(1)(b) and (c)). Certain extensions permitted by the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention 1982 (Cmnd 8941) are introduced, in particular— discharges by non-United Kingdom ships into the United Kingdom’s controlled waters beyond the territorial sea and, subject to certain restrictions on institution of proceedings contained in regulation 38, elsewhere, are prohibited; but where proceedings for a discharge of type mentioned in paragraph (i) are instituted, they may be suspended if the flag state institutes proceedings (regulation 39); Merchant Shipping Notices referred to in the Regulations may be obtained from Eros Marketing Support Services Ltd,, Unit B, Imber Court Trading Estate, Orchard Lane, East Molesley, Surrey KT8 0BN. The MARPOL Convention and Protocol, and amendments and resolutions and other publications of IMO and MEPC referred to in regulation 1(2) can be obtained from IMO, 4 Albert Embankment, London SE1 75R.

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.

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”; the provision says the conduct is “punishable”
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