NORTH WARWICKSHIRE BOROUGH COUNCIL v EMILY BROCKLEBANK & ANOR.

Penalties for contempt in the civil jurisdiction serve three connected objectives: punishment, securing future compliance with court orders and rehabilitation where possible. Criminal sentencing guidelines may provide a useful analogy, but the court must account for the lower custodial powers and more limited range of community sentences available in civil proceedings.

Persistent breaches, particularly breaches committed while on bail and after failure to attend court, may justify immediate custody. The court should assess cumulative culpability, avoid double-counting persistence as a separate aggravating factor, give appropriate credit for admissions, and take time spent on remand into account. Where remand sufficiently meets the appropriate custodial penalty, the court may make no further order.

North Warwickshire Borough Council sought penalties against Emily Brocklebank and Amy Pritchard for three admitted breaches of an interim injunction concerning protests at Kingsbury Oil Terminal. The breaches occurred on 26 April, 28 April and 4 May 2022. The defendants had been arrested and bailed after the earlier breaches, and on 4 May attended the protest rather than attending court to answer bail.

The injunction prohibited protest within a five-metre buffer zone and certain conduct in the wider locality. The court also considered the defendants’ mitigation, their previous convictions for obstructing the highway, the relevance of criminal sentencing guidance, time spent on remand and costs.

1. Penalty objectives. The civil contempt jurisdiction requires the court to consider punishment, securing future compliance with court orders and rehabilitation where possible. The court must impose a penalty proportionate to those objectives.
2. Use of criminal guidelines. Although the Sentencing Council’s Definitive Guidelines are not binding in civil contempt proceedings, the Definitive Guideline for breach of a Criminal Behaviour Order provided a useful analogy. The court had to account for the civil courts’ lower maximum custodial power of two years and their more limited community sentencing powers. The draft Civil Justice Council guidelines were not in force and were not preferred.
3. Assessment of seriousness. The defendants’ three breaches over eight days amounted to persistent conduct. The 4 May breach was the lead matter because it occurred while they were on bail and after they had failed to attend court. It fell within the guideline’s highest culpability category, but the court assessed the harm as category 3. Persistence was not counted again as a separate aggravating factor after being used to determine culpability.
4. Mitigation and custody. The defendants’ admissions attracted 25 per cent credit, despite not being made at the first opportunity. The appropriate post-trial penalty for the lead breach was 28 days’ imprisonment, reduced to 21 days after credit. Each defendant had spent 10 days on remand, treated in the civil jurisdiction as equivalent to 20 days’ custody. No further custodial order was therefore necessary, and the order recorded that each had served the equivalent of a 20-day sentence.
5. The defendants were released from custody. Each was ordered to pay £195 towards the claimant’s costs, payable within 14 days unless an application for instalments supported by evidence of means was made.