UK Offence Report

Improvement notice

regulation 9(2) of The Calorie Labelling (Out of Home Sector) (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

2 Any person who fails to comply with an improvement notice is guilty of an offence.

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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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 9(2)?

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 to comply with an improvement notice.
  2. Being served with a notice under the Calorie Labelling (Out of Home Sector) (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
27 July 2021
In force from
6 April 2022
Extent
E

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 require qualifying businesses which sell food for immediate consumption, either in a café, restaurant or other catering establishment or as take away food, to provide information relating to the energy content of the food they sell to consumers in kilocalories (“calorie information”). Regulation 3 identifies the food for which calorie information must be displayed. Regulation 4 defines “exempt food”, for which calorie information does not have to be provided. Regulation 5 sets out the information which must be displayed, and where that information must be displayed. Regulation 6 sets how this information is to be displayed where food is sold on a website or through a mobile application. Regulation 7 defines “qualifying businesses”, which are required to display calorie information in relation to food. Regulations 8 to 12 and the Schedule to the Regulations provide for the enforcement of the Regulations. Regulation 9 applies section 10 of the Food Safety Act 1990 (c. 16) on improvement notices with modifications. The Schedule provides for fixed monetary penalties. Regulation 13 provides for a review of the Regulations every five years in accordance with the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 (c. 26), and regulation 14 applies a number of other provisions of the Food Safety Act 1990 with modifications. 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/calorie-labelling-for-food-and-drink-served-outside-of-the-home, and 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.

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