Keys, R (on the application of) v Director of Public Prosecutions

A restraining order prohibiting a person from “going to” specified premises ordinarily prohibits entry onto those premises. It does not, without clearer wording, prohibit being near them or remaining on adjacent public land. If proximity is intended to be prohibited, the order should say so expressly. A conviction based solely on close proximity therefore cannot stand where the order prohibits going to premises but does not prohibit approaching or being near them.

The claimant appealed by way of case stated against his conviction at Bournemouth Magistrates’ Court. The conviction concerned alleged breaches of a restraining order made by East Dorset Magistrates’ Court, which prohibited him from going to the premises of a specified supermarket, including its car park.

The claimant had been observed near the supermarket, including on an adjacent council car park and a public footpath, but had not entered the supermarket. The central issue was whether being in close proximity amounted to going to the premises for the purposes of the order.

1. Appeal allowed. The conviction was quashed, and the Magistrates were directed to quash it.
2. The relevant words of the restraining order prohibited the claimant from going to the supermarket premises. In their ordinary meaning, those words meant entering the premises. They did not mean going near the premises.
3. The Magistrates were not entitled to convict on the basis that the claimant’s presence approximately 20 metres away, approximately two metres away in an adjacent council car park, or on the public footpath amounted to going to the supermarket premises. On each occasion he remained outside the supermarket.
4. If the Magistrates had intended to prohibit the claimant from going near the premises, that restriction could have been stated expressly in the order. The wording actually used did not impose such a prohibition.
5. The case-stated question was therefore answered in the negative. The conviction was not a decision to which a reasonable bench of Magistrates could come.

• Bournemouth Magistrates’ Court: convicted the claimant on 24 January 2003 of breaching the restraining order.
• High Court (Administrative Court): allowed the case-stated appeal and directed that the conviction be quashed.