UK Offence Report

Access to trust information

regulation 4(9) of The Register of Overseas Entities (Protection and Trusts) (Amendment) 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

9 A person who does not comply with

a condition imposed under paragraph (8) commits 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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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
breaching a condition of a licence, permit or consent
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 4(9)?

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 does not comply with a condition imposed under paragraph (8).
  2. Holding a valid licence but doing the thing it allows outside the hours, place or limits its conditions set under the Register of Overseas Entities (Protection and Trusts) (Amendment) Regulations 2025.
  3. Failing to do something a condition positively requires - a record, a notification, a monitoring step - even though the licensed activity itself is carried on properly.

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
24 February 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 make provision relating to the register of overseas entities (“the ROE”) kept by the registrar of companies for England and Wales (“the registrar”) in accordance with Part 1 of the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022 (c. 10). The provisions relate to the protection of information, the disclosure of trust information and additional required information from overseas entities and registrable beneficial owners which are legal entities. Part 2 amends the Register of Overseas Entities (Delivery, Protection and Trust Services) Regulations 2022 (S.I. 2022/870) to allow for anyone to make an application for protection whose information could be published or disclosed by the registrar under ROE. This is because Part 3 will allow for information about trusts to be disclosed which could not otherwise be. Regulation 3(2)(a) and (b) allows for a wider range of people to make an application and regulation 6 includes additional grounds under which an application for protection may be made. Part 2 also removes reference to “specified public authorities” in the 2022 Regulations as this has been superseded by section 25(6) of the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022, which was substituted by section 168 of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 (c. 56). Part 3 allows for anyone to apply to the registrar for disclosure of trust information. Regulation 4(2) imposes a condition that applicants have to demonstrate they have a legitimate interest, set out in regulation 4(3)(f), if they want to make a bulk application or if the information relates to minors. Regulation 4(3) sets out the information that needs to be included in an application. Regulation 4(4) allows for the registrar to tell an applicant that they need to satisfy the condition in regulation 4(2). This is because an applicant may not know when first making the application that it would result in the disclosure of information relating to minors. Regulation 4(5) sets out the reasons the registrar may refuse an application and regulation 4(8) states that the registrar may impose conditions relating to the disclosure.

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