UK Offence Report

11 A person commits an offence if they fail to comply with an improvement notice served under regulation 10.

regulation 11 of The Food (Promotion and Placement) (England) Regulations 2021

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

11 A person commits an offence if they fail to comply with an improvement notice served under regulation 10.

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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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
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 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 11?

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 fail to comply with an improvement notice served under regulation 10.
  2. Being served with a notice under the Food (Promotion and Placement) (England) Regulations 2021 and doing nothing by the date it specifies.
  3. Doing part of what the notice requires, where it required all of it.
  4. Disagreeing with the notice and ignoring it, rather than using whatever appeal the instrument provides.

Penalty

Mode of trial
Not determined
Maximum fine
Not determined
Maximum prison (summary)
Not determined

no penalty is stated in this instrument; it may be in the enabling Act, or in a general penalties provision this pass did not connect to the offence.

No penalty was determined from this instrument. It may be in the enabling Act, or in a general penalties provision this pass did not connect to the offence. Absence of a figure here is not evidence that the offence carries no penalty.

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
2 December 2021
In force from
1 October 2022
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 provide for restrictions on the marketing in a store or on an online marketplace of certain foods and drinks that are less healthy. Regulation 3 defines the food and drink to which the Regulations apply. Regulation 4 defines the businesses to which the Regulations apply (“qualifying businesses”). Regulation 5 prohibits qualifying businesses from offering certain price promotions on food and drink to which the Regulations apply. Regulation 6 prohibits qualifying businesses from offering certain price promotions (“free refills”) on drinks within the scope of regulation 6. Regulation 7 prohibits qualifying businesses from placing food and drink to which the Regulations apply in certain locations in a store. Regulation 8 applies to online marketplaces and prohibits the placement of food and drink in certain parts of the online marketplace on which the food and drink is offered for sale. Regulation 9 requires each food authority to enforce and execute these Regulations in its area. Regulation 10 enables a food authority to serve an improvement notice on a person where it has reasonable grounds for believing that the person has failed to comply with one or more of regulations 5, 6, 7 or 8. Regulation 11 creates an offence where a person fails to comply with an improvement notice, and regulation 12 deals with sanctions for that offence including, together with Schedule 2, provision enabling a food authority to impose a fixed monetary penalty. Regulations 13 and 14 require food authorities to publish, respectively, guidance about its use of the power to impose fixed monetary penalties, and reports about the enforcement action that have taken under these Regulations. Regulation 15 requires the Secretary of State to carry out a review of the regulatory provisions of these Regulations and to publish a report setting out the conclusions of the review. Regulation 16 applies, with modifications, various provisions of the Food Safety Act 1990 – notably in relation to enforcement powers. A full impact assessment of the effect that this instrument will have on the costs of business, the voluntary sector and the public sector is available from https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/restricting-promotions-of-food-and-drink-that-is-high-in-fat-sugar-and-salt and is available from the Department of Health and Social Care at 39 Victoria Street, London SW1H 0EU.

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 “commits 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