Court of Appeal Suspends Sentence for Appellant

On Friday 21^st March 2025 the Court of Appeal quashed the sentence imposed by St Albans Crown Court on 29^th January 2025 of twenty-four months immediate imprisonment. The appellant, represented by Charles Hannaford, was sentenced to a fifteen-month custodial sentence, suspended for two years with thirty days of RAR and fifty hours of unpaid work.

The appellant, along with six co-defendants, was part of a group that stole six caravans from a storage facility in November 2021. Four defendants, including the appellant, entered guilty pleas to the offence of theft at PTPH, entitling them to a twenty-five percent credit. Several of the co-defendants had prior convictions for theft offences and some were also to be sentenced for additional offences at the hearing in January 2025. Unlike his co-defendants, the appellant had only one previous conviction for a public order offence, which the court accepted was irrelevant.

The sentencing Judge took the same starting point for all defendants which was accepted to be Harm Category 1, as the total value of the caravans stolen was in excess of £101k, and Culpability B as it was said to be some degree of planning and a significant role in a group activity. The starting point was one of two years with a range from one year to three and a half years custody.

The sentencing Judge then aggravated the sentence to reflect the co-defendant’s previous convictions for theft offences before applying a twenty-five percent credit, arriving at a sentence of twenty-seven months. This sentence applied to all four defendants, including the appellant. At the hearing in January 2025, Mr Hannaford argued that the appellant did not have the same previous record as his co-defendants, and therefore, it was wrong to aggravate his sentence in line with theirs. The sentencing Judge accepted the submission and reduced the sentence by three months to one of twenty-four months but refused to consider whether the sentence could be suspended having remarked, in respect of the previous defendants, that if the court did not treat the offenders seriously the public would be outraged.

On behalf of the appellant, three principal submissions were advanced:

1. Firstly, the sentencing Judge should have arrived at the starting point of two years (B1), at which point the Judge should have considered aggravating and mitigating features, for which significant mitigation advanced, and then applied the appropriate downward adjustment. Following the adjustment the Judge should then have applied credit of twenty-five percent as the correct approach. It was wrong to reduce the sentence for mitigation after applying credit for guilty plea.
   
2. Secondly, the sentencing Judge should have taken into account the three and a half years that elapsed between the offending (November 2021) and sentencing (January 2025) when considering whether a community disposal was more appropriate and whether a discretionary driving ban should have been imposed. It was submitted that such a ban, whilst available to the court, was wrong as it interfered with the appellants rehabilitation as a self-employed gardener who relies on driving to job sites.
   
3. Thirdly, the sentencing Judge was wrong not to consider whether the defendant’s individual sentence of twenty-four months could be suspended.

The court accepted that the correct approach to sentencing was, as submitted, to apply the reduction for credit after the adjustment for aggravating and mitigating features. Furthermore, the court held there was “considerable personal mitigation available to this appellant” which would have reduced the sentence to twenty months before applying the credit, further reducing the sentence to fifteen months.

In respect of the second and third submissions, the court held “the judge had considered that this was an offence where immediate custody was the only appropriate punishment but he [Judge] had not considered that question separately in relation to this appellant as distinct from the group of defendants as a whole…” Concluding “we can see why judge thought for an offence of this nature that immediate custody was likely necessary… in our judgment in this particular case it was outweighed by other factors in which we have referred”. In addition, the disqualification from driving was also quashed, the court having accepted that it would interfere with the appellant rehabilitation, namely his employment, if the sentence was suspended.

Charles Hannaford was instructed by Nia Dawson of Humphrys Dawson Solicitors.