UK Offence Report

Obligations to provide information.

regulation 1A(6) of The Timeshare Regulations 1997

The provision has been revoked and no saving provision preserving liability for earlier conduct was found.

What the provision says

6 A person who contravenes subsection (1) above is guilty of an offence and liable— a on summary conviction, to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum, and b 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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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
contravening a requirement of the instrument
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 1A(6)?

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. On these words an offence is committed where a person contravenes subsection (1) above.
  2. Doing the thing the provision prohibits under the Timeshare Regulations 1997, whatever the reason for doing it.
  3. Where the requirement is a positive duty, letting the time for performing it pass without performing it.

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
Revoked
Revoked by
The Timeshare, Holiday Products, Resale and Exchange Contracts Regulations 2010
Revoked on
23 February 2011
Made
24 March 1997
In force from
29 April 1997
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 implement Directive 94/47/EC of the European Parliament and Council (OJ No. L 280, 29.10.94, p. 83) on the protection of purchasers in respect of certain aspects of contracts relating to the purchase of the right to use immovable properties on a timeshare basis. The Directive requires member States to provide measures for the protection of purchasers of timeshare rights in immovable properties. The Regulations provide for new rights in respect of timeshare rights in buildings. The protection of purchasers of timeshare rights in caravans and mobile homes remains unchanged save for some very minor adjustments. To benefit from the new protection a purchaser must be an individual who is not acting in the course of a business. The Timeshare Act 1992 (“the 1992 Act”) has been amended and extended. Timeshare rights acquired as the result of share ownership and timeshare rights under collective investment schemes formerly excluded by section 1(3) of the 1992 Act are no longer excluded from the application of the 1992 Act. The application of the 1992 Act has also been extended to cover timeshare rights where the accommodation is situated in the United Kingdom and timeshare rights where the accommodation is situated in another EEA state and the purchaser is ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom (regulation 2). A vendor of rights to timeshare accommodation in a building is required to provide any person on request with a document containing information on the property. Such information will become a term of the agreement if an individual not acting in the course of a business, who receives such information, subsequently enters into an agreement to purchase timeshare rights in the property. Subsequent changes to the information are only permitted in limited circumstances (regulation 3 and Schedule). Advertisements of timeshare rights must refer to the possibility of obtaining the document mentioned above and state where it may be obtained (regulation 4). An agreement for timeshare accommodation in a building must set out certain minimum information on such matters as the nature of the property, the price and recurring costs and charges (regulation 5 and Schedule). The purchaser is entitled to have the agreement in the language of the country of his residence or the country of which he is a national. In addition, a purchaser resident in the United Kingdom is entitled to the contract in the English language (regulation 6). A purchaser is also entitled to a translation in the language of the country where the property is situated (regulation 7). If the timeshare agreement relates to accommodation in a building, the notice under section 2 of the 1992 Act will have to state that cancellation of the timeshare agreement will automatically cancel any related timeshare credit agreement (regulation 8). The rights to cancel a timeshare agreement for accommodation in a building are extended. The fourteen day cancellation period is extended up to three months and ten days if certain information has not been provided to the purchaser (regulation 9). Advance payments are prohibited during the cancellation period (regulation 10). The vendor of rights to timeshare accommodation in a building will be obliged to inform any creditor forthwith on receipt of a cancellation notice which automatically cancels a timeshare credit agreement (regulation 11). Certain of the new obligations on vendors are statutory duties subject to civil proceedings (regulation 12). The provisions on offences have been consequentially amended as necessary (regulation 13) and there are further general consequential amendments (regulation 14).

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