UK Offence Report

Offences and penalties

regulation 15(1) of The Sheep Annual Premium and Suckler Cow Premium Quotas Regulations 1997

The provision has been revoked and no saving provision preserving liability for earlier conduct was found.

What the provision says

1 Any person who fails without reasonable excuse to comply with a requirement or prohibition imposed on him by regulation 4(1) or 7(2) or by or under the Community legislation shall be guilty of an offence and liable, on summary conviction, to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or, 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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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
An element of the offence, for the prosecution to prove

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.

“Without reasonable excuse” here is an element of the offence rather than a defence, so its absence is for the prosecution to prove (R v Charles [2009] EWCA Crim 1570).

Classifier’s reasoning: no word of intention, knowledge, recklessness or negligence in the offence or its provision; qualified by reasonable excuse (an element; prosecution disproves once raised).

The defence, as drafted

1 Any person who fails without reasonable excuse to comply with a requirement or prohibition imposed on him by regulation 4(1) or 7(2) or by or under the Community legislation shall be guilty of an offence and liable, on summary conviction, to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or, on conviction on

What would breach regulation 15(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. On these words an offence is committed where a person fails without reasonable excuse to comply with a requirement or prohibition imposed on him by regulation 4(1) or 7(2) or by or under the Community legislation.
  2. Doing what the provision prohibits, or failing to do what it requires under the Sheep Annual Premium and Suckler Cow Premium Quotas Regulations 1997.

Penalty

Mode of trial
Either way — magistrates’ court or Crown 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 (1997-12-31); 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
Revoked
Revoked by
The Sheep Annual Premium and Suckler Cow Premium Quotas Regulations 2003
Revoked on
1 October 2003
Made
26 November 1997
In force from
31 December 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 (“the Regulations”) consolidate (with changes) the Sheep Annual Premium and Suckler Cow Premium Quotas Regulations 1993 (S.I. 1993/1626, as amended by S.I. 1993/3036, S.I. 1994/2894 and S.I. 1996/1939). The Regulations, which extend to the United Kingdom as a whole, make provision for the administration of the quota system for sheep annual premium established by Articles 5a and 5b of Council Regulation 3013/89 and the quota system for suckler cow premium established by Articles 4(d) to 4(f) of Council Regulation 805/68. Definitions of references to those Council Regulations may be found in regulation 2(1) of the Regulations. The Regulations— lay down rules for determining the location of a producer’s holding (regulation 3 as read with Schedule 1); lay down rules for notifying transfers and leases of quota (regulation 4); specify the proportion of quota that is transferred to the national reserve on a transfer of quota without a corresponding transfer of a holding (regulation 5(1)); specify a minimum level of suckler cow premium quota that small producers may transfer or lease out (regulation 5(2)); lay down rules for determining whether or not a producer has transferred quota without also transferring his holding (regulation 6 and Schedule 2); lay down rules in relation to the place of origin, acquisition and use of quota from the national reserve (regulation 7); specify that in certain cases quota may be transferred or leased between sensitive zones as defined by regulation 2(1) (regulation 8); provide for the division of the national reserve into 6 divisions, each division to correspond with a sensitive zone (regulation 9); provide for the distribution of quota in the national reserve into the aforementioned divisions (regulation 10); lay down the principles governing allocations of quota from the national reserve (regulation 11; Schedules 3, 4 and 5); establish a quota register and provide for the supply of copies of register entries in specified circumstances (regulations 12 and 13); give specified persons a number of powers which may be used for the purpose of verifying an application for an allocation of quota from the national reserve (regulation 14)); create offences and penalties (regulation 15); revoke S.I. 1993/1626, as amended (regulation 16). The principal changes of substance made by the Regulations are as follows: the 2 sensitive zones into which Northern Ireland was formerly divided have been combined into a single sensitive zone; the rules regarding the location of a holding situated in more than one sensitive zone which are set out in regulation 3 have been clarified; revisions have been made to the conditions governing eligibility under categories III, group (b), IV and VI, group (a), of the national reserve which are set out in Schedule 3; to the rules for determining the amount of quota to which persons falling within those categories are entitled which are set out in Schedule 4; and to the test for determining when an allocation of quota from the national reserve is to be effective which is set out in Schedule 5. A regulatory appraisal has been prepared in respect of these Regulations. A copy of it has been deposited in the library of each House of Parliament.

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