Rockall v Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

For a statutory time limit governing summary proceedings, proceedings are instituted when the prosecutor lays a sufficient information, rather than when a summons is issued, where the statutory context equates institution with the ordinary six-month limitation rule.

An information transmitted electronically is laid when it is made available to the magistrates’ court in a form which can properly be inferred to be retrievable within time. Actual printing, retrieval or consideration by an authorised officer is unnecessary. The court may draw that inference from transmission evidence, although contrary evidence must be considered.

The appellant appealed by way of case stated from the decision of the Suffolk justices, who had convicted him of felling growing trees without a licence contrary to section 17(1) of the Forestry Act 1967. The issue was whether proceedings had been instituted within the six-month period in section 17(2).

The respondent faxed the information and draft summons to the magistrates’ court on Friday 10 February 2006. The information was stamped and the summons issued on Monday 13 February 2006. The justices held that the information had been laid on 10 February and therefore had jurisdiction. The appeal concerned both the meaning of institution and whether the evidence justified that conclusion.

1. The appeal was dismissed. The justices were entitled to answer both questions in the case stated affirmatively and to conclude that the information had been laid within time.

2. Per Latham LJ, with whom Davis J agreed, the meaning of institution depends on statutory context. In the context of section 17(2) of the Forestry Act 1967, the time limit was to be equated with the general rule in section 127 of the Magistrates’ Court Act 1980. The relevant act was therefore the laying of the information, not the later issue of a summons. The prosecutor controls the laying of the information but does not control the issue of process.

3. The decision in R v Manchester Stipendiary Magistrate, ex parte Hill [1993] AC 328 supported that conclusion. The foundation of the magistrates’ jurisdiction is the laying of the information. Delivery and receipt are ministerial, and an information may be received by an authorised member of the clerk’s staff. A summons is not required to establish jurisdiction.

4. For electronic transmission, the essential question is whether the information was made available to the justices, the clerk or an authorised person within time. In the case of a fax, it is sufficient that the information was retrievable from the court’s fax machine. It need not actually have been printed, retrieved or considered before expiry of the time limit. The approach in R v Pontypridd Juvenile Court ex parte B and others (1988) 153 JP 213 and the reasoning in Atkinson v Director of Public Prosecutions [2005] 1 WLR 96 supported that conclusion.

5. The fax headings and transmission report justified an inference that the information had been made available on 10 February. The later dates on the information and summons were contrary evidence, but the justices were entitled to regard them as reflecting the later processing of the fax. Their conclusion was not perverse.

• High Court (Administrative Court), Divisional Court: appeal by way of case stated dismissed; the justices’ decision that they had jurisdiction was upheld.
• Suffolk Magistrates’ Court: the justices concluded that the information had been laid on 10 February 2006, convicted the appellant and imposed a conditional discharge for 12 months with £750 prosecution costs.