McNeill, R. v

A court sentencing an offender under 21 must impose detention in a young offender institution, rather than imprisonment, where Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000, section 89(1), applies. Where a statutory aggregate limit applies to several summary-only offences, consecutive terms must not exceed that limit. All driving disqualification orders take effect on the day they are imposed. Accordingly, disqualifications imposed under totting-up provisions and another power run concurrently.

Totality requires the court to assess the whole course of offending. It does not require otherwise justified consecutive custodial terms to be made concurrent.

The applicant, aged 19, pleaded guilty at the first opportunity to 13 offences committed on three occasions. They included domestic burglaries, attempted burglary, theft, taking vehicles without consent, aggravated vehicle taking, driving offences and assault with intent to resist arrest.

On 2 November 2007 the Crown Court at Guildford imposed an aggregate of 18 months’ imprisonment and driving disqualification totalling three years. The applicant sought leave to appeal against sentence. The appeal concerned unlawful sentencing orders, the statutory aggregate maximum for summary-only offences, totality, and the lawful structure of the driving disqualifications.

1. Leave was granted and the appeal was allowed to a limited extent. The Recorder’s orders contained several legal errors, but the court did not reduce the effective total detention or the three-year period of disqualification.
2. The applicant was under 21. His purported sentences of imprisonment were therefore unlawful. They had to be sentences of detention in a young offender institution under section 89(1) of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000.
3. The Recorder could not impose more than six months in aggregate for the three summary-only offences. The court quashed the six-month sentences for offences 8 and 10 and substituted two months for each, so that the aggregate complied with the statutory limit.
4. No further reduction followed from totality. The 18-month total was not manifestly excessive when the offending was viewed as a whole. It included repeated domestic burglary, attempted burglary, vehicle offences and a serious assault on a police officer. The applicant’s age, early guilty pleas and lack of a previous custodial sentence did not require the earlier offences to be concurrent with the 12 months imposed for the later offending.
5. All disqualifications took effect when imposed. The Recorder could not make the totting-up disqualification begin after the separate 12-month disqualification. The court lawfully restructured the orders so that the relevant disqualifications ran concurrently and produced a three-year disqualification, with the extended driving-test requirement for aggravated vehicle taking.

The court also observed that the Recorder’s brief sentencing remarks and repeated errors were unsatisfactory. Legal representatives in a complex sentencing exercise must know the court’s powers, prevent errors where possible, and seek clarification if the order is unclear.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) Granted leave and allowed the sentence appeal to correct unlawful custodial sentences and disqualification orders. It retained the effective 18-month term of detention and three-year disqualification.
• Crown Court at Guildford On 2 November 2007, imposed sentences for 13 offences which purported to total 18 months’ imprisonment and three years’ driving disqualification.