UK Offence Report

1 A contravention or failure to comply with regulations 4 to 7, 9 and 11 to 28 shall be an offence.

regulation 31(1) of The Domiciliary Care Agencies (Wales) Regulations 2004

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 contravention or failure to comply with regulations 4 to 7, 9 and 11 to 28 shall be 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 This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.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 do something the instrument requires
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 31(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. Not doing what the provision requires under the Domiciliary Care Agencies (Wales) Regulations 2004, by the time it requires it to be done.
  2. Doing it, but not in the manner or to the standard the instrument specifies.

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
3 February 2004
In force from
1 March 2004
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 are made under the Care Standards Act 2000 (“the Act”) and apply in relation to domiciliary care agencies (“agencies”) in Wales. Parts I and II of the Act provide for the National Assembly for Wales, in relation to Wales, to register persons carrying on or managing agencies and to inspect agency premises. Part II also provides that a person who carries on or manages an agency without being registered in respect of it commits an offence. The Act also provides for the National Assembly to make regulations governing the conduct of agencies in relation to Wales. Under section 13 of the Act the National Assembly must be satisfied that the regulations are being and will continue to be complied with if it is to grant an application for registration. Regulation 3 excludes certain undertakings from the definition of domiciliary care agency in section 4 of the Act. These include undertakings which are carried on solely by an individual who is not employed by an organisation to carry it on, who does not employ anyone else for the purposes of the undertaking and who arranges personal care to fewer than four service users. Regulations 4 to 6 are about the agency’s statement of purpose and service users' guide. Each agency must have a statement of purpose and a service users' guide to the agency (regulations 4 and 5). The registered person must have regard to the statement of purpose in making staffing arrangements for the agency (regulation 16), and ensure that the agency premises are suitable for the purpose of achieving the aims and objectives set out in the statement of purpose (regulation 24). The statement and the guide are to be kept under review and revised if necessary (regulation 6). Regulation 7 requires the fact of an agency’s registration to be noted on its correspondence. PART II of the Regulations makes provision about the fitness of persons carrying on or managing the agency, and requires satisfactory information as to the matters set out in schedule 2 to be available in relation to these persons. Where the person carrying on an agency is an organisation, it must nominate a responsible person in respect of whom this information must be available (regulation 8). Regulation 9 provides that a manager must be appointed for an agency in certain circumstances, and regulation 11 imposes general requirements in relation to the conduct of an agency and the need for registered persons to undertake appropriate training. Part III of the Regulations makes provision about the conduct of agencies, in particular as to the arrangements for the provision of personal care (regulation 14), the fitness of workers (regulation 15), staffing requirements (regulation 16), provision of a handbook and code of conduct to staff and information to service users (regulations 17 and 18), identification to be produced by workers (regulation 19), record keeping (regulation 20), complaints procedures of the agency (regulation 21), the seeking of staff views about the conduct of an agency (regulation 22) and the review of the operations of an agency (regulation 23). PART III also makes provision about the fitness of agency premises (regulation 24), imposes requirements as to the financial position of agencies (regulation 25) and requires notice to be given to the National Assembly of specified events relating to an agency (regulations 26 to 29). Part IV of the Regulations deals with miscellaneous matters such as the discharge of obligations under the Regulations where an agency has more than one registered person (regulation 30), offences under the Regulations (regulation 31), the specification of appropriate offices of the National Assembly for the purposes of obligations under the Regulations to give notice (regulation 32), amendments to the Statutory Instruments about the making of applications for registration and the payment of registration fees to take account of the application of the Act to agencies (regulations 33 and 34), and also makes transitional provision (regulation 35).

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 0.88.

Basis
the provision says the conduct “is an offence”; the provision says an offence is committed “if” something happens
Confidence
0.88 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