UK Offence Report

Offences etc

regulation 26(1) of The Motor Fuel Price (Open Data) Regulations 2025

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 person commits an offence if the person—

a provides false or misleading information in response to

a request made in accordance with these Regulations;

b does, or omits to do,

a thing, including falsification, which prevents the CMA or the aggregator from accessing information, documents, equipment or other material.

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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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
making a false or misleading statement
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 26(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. Entering a figure on a form or return that is known to be wrong under the Motor Fuel Price (Open Data) Regulations 2025.
  2. Leaving out something the form asks for, where the omission is what makes the answer misleading.
  3. Producing a document to an official that has been altered since it was issued.

Penalty

Mode of trial
Summary only — tried in a magistrates’ court
Maximum fine
Unlimited
Standard scale
Level 5
Maximum prison (summary)
Not determined

level 5 is unlimited in England and Wales for offences committed on or after 12 March 2015 (LASPO 2012 s.85, S.I. 2015/664).

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
17 December 2025
In force from
Not determined
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 establish an open data scheme under Part 1 of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 (c. 18) in relation to the price of motor fuel. The scheme will be administered by a person appointed by the Secretary of State, known as the aggregator (Part 2). A person who offers petrol or diesel for retail sale in the United Kingdom (“motor fuel trader”) is under a duty to register with the aggregator by providing the information in Schedule 1, which includes the price at which a litre of each different grade of motor fuel is offered for sale at the person’s petrol filling stations (Part 3). Motor fuel traders must then notify the aggregator of any changes to that selling price within 30 minutes of the change (Part 4). The aggregator must process the information provided and make the “price information” (that is, the unique registration number of a petrol filling station and the information in paragraphs 1 to 10 of Schedule 1 relating to it) available to a person who registers with the aggregator for that purpose. The price information is to be made available at all times by means of an application programming interface, and twice a day in an electronic document. The price information can be withheld if recipients do not comply with standards set by the aggregator in relation to the accessing and use of the information (Part 5). Part 6 confers monitoring powers on the aggregator and investigatory powers on the Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”), which is the body responsible for enforcing compliance with the scheme. Part 7 enables the CMA to impose financial penalties on a motor fuel trader which provides false or misleading information in response to a request, or fails to comply with requirements imposed by or under the Regulations. Maximum penalties are determined by reference to the worldwide turnover of the undertaking (within the meaning of Part 1 of the Competition Act 1998 (c. 41)) which the motor fuel trader constitutes or of which it forms part. Part 7 also provides for a criminal offence where a person provides false or misleading information in response to a request or does, or omits to do, a thing, including falsification, which prevents the CMA or the aggregator from accessing information, documents, equipment or other material. Part 8 provides for appeals against financial penalties and Part 9 includes a duty on the Secretary of State to review the Regulations. 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 the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, 3 - 8 Whitehall Place, London SW1A 2HH, and is published with the Explanatory Memorandum alongside the instrument on www.legislation.gov.uk.

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