UK Offence Report

1 A registered person who, without reasonable excuse, has failed to comply with the requirements of…

regulation 10(1) of The Day Care and Child Minding (National Standards) (England) Regulations 2003

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 A registered person who, without reasonable excuse, has failed to comply with the requirements of regulation 5 or 6 or paragraph (2) of regulation 8 shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale.

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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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 registered person
Conduct
breaching the provision
Fault element
Mixed — some elements strict, some not
Burden of proof
An element of the offence, for the prosecution to prove

The prosecution must prove the conduct, and - for those elements the provision qualifies - the state of mind it names. The remaining elements carry no fault requirement, so they are strict.

“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: the offence itself carries no fault word, but a duty it criminalises by cross-reference uses so far as is reasonably practicable, reasonably practicable; which element that governs was not determined; qualified by reasonable excuse (an element; prosecution disproves once raised).

The defence, as drafted

1 A registered person who, without reasonable excuse, has failed to comply with the requirements of regulation 5 or 6 or paragraph (2) of regulation 8 shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale.

What would breach regulation 10(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 registered person has failed to comply with the requirements of regulation 5 or 6 or paragraph (2) of regulation 8.
  2. Doing what the provision prohibits, or failing to do what it requires under the Day Care and Child Minding (National Standards) (England) Regulations 2003.

Penalty

Mode of trial
Summary only — tried in a magistrates’ 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 (2003-09-01); 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
Status not determined
Made
1 August 2003
In force from
1 September 2003
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 revoke and re-enact with modifications the Day Care and Child Minding (National Standards) Regulations 2001 which are repealed. They require that a person who is registered under Part XA of the Children Act 1989 (as inserted by the Care Standards Act 2000) to act as a child minder or provide day care meets the requirements of the national standards and has regard to the supporting criteria, as set out in the documents listed in Schedule 1. He must also ensure that corporal punishment is not used by anyone who looks after children (regulation 5). Regulations 4 and 8 also place certain duties and confer certain powers on Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools in England in respect of the national standards and supporting criteria, including the power to take criminal proceedings against a person so registered in the circumstances set out in regulations 5, 6, 8 and 10. These Regulations also require that a person so registered notifies Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools of the matters specified in Schedule 2, and keeps the records specified in Schedule 3.

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”; the provision states liability on summary conviction; the provision states a penalty in older drafting
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