UK Offence Report

Offences and penalties

regulation 5 of The Environmental Protection (Controls on Injurious Substances) Regulations 1999

The provision has been revoked and no saving provision preserving liability for earlier conduct was found.

What the provision says

5 Any person who contravenes regulation 3(1), regulation 4(1) or regulation 4(2), or causes or permits another person to contravene any of those provisions, shall be guilty of an offence and shall be 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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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
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 5?

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 regulation 3(1), regulation 4(1) or regulation 4(2), or causes or permits another person to contravene any of those provisions.
  2. Doing the thing the provision prohibits under the Environmental Protection (Controls on Injurious Substances) Regulations 1999, 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 Creosote (Prohibition on Use and Marketing)(No. 2) Regulations 2003 (revoked)
Revoked on
9 June 2003
Made
6 December 1999
In force from
29 December 1999
Extent
E+W+S

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, which apply to Great Britain, give effect in part to European Parliament and Council Directive 94/60/EC amending for the fourteenth time Directive 76/769/EEC (OJ No. L262, 27.9.1976, p.201) on the approximation of the laws, regulations and administrative provisions of the Member States relating to restriction on the marketing and use of certain dangerous substances and preparations. Regulation 3 prohibits, subject to exceptions, the placing on the market of wood treated with substances or preparations containing one or more substances listed in the Schedule to these Regulations at more than a specified concentration. Regulation 4 prohibits, subject to an exception for old treated wood, the use of treated wood in certain circumstances. Regulation 6 makes it a criminal offence to contravene any of the prohibitions in regulations 3 and 4 and specifies the penalty. The regulations also make a technical amendment to the Environmental Protection (Controls on Hexachloroethane) Regulations 1998. These Regulations apply to Great Britain. In Directive 76/769/EEC, substances are identified by reference to their CAS number and EINECS number, shown in each case in the Schedule to these regulations. These numbers are given in, respectively, the CAS Registry Handbook, ISSN 0093-058X, which may be inspected at the Royal Society of Chemistry, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1V 0BN and the European Inventory of Existing Commercial Chemical Substances (OJ No. C 146A, 15.6.90, p.1).

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 0.92.

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