Adam Royle & Ors v R

A sentencing reduction for information or assistance to law-enforcement authorities is a pragmatic reward serving the public interest. It is available under both the common-law text procedure and the statutory procedure in the Sentencing Code.

The reduction must be assessed on the facts. Its extent depends principally on the value of the assistance, the risk to the informer, its practical results, and the informer’s own criminality. Familiar ranges are not automatic entitlements.

Under the text procedure, the present law requires only a general explanation of sentence under section 52. Rule 28.1 of the Criminal Procedure Rules applies only to the statutory procedure. An appellate court reviews the resulting sentence, not its arithmetic.

Three unrelated applications for leave to appeal against sentence were heard together because each concerned credit for information or assistance provided to the police. Two applicants, AJC and BCQ, were anonymised because identifying them as informers would create a risk of harm. Their individual applications were addressed in separate closed judgments.

Royle had pleaded guilty to robbery in the Crown Court at Norwich and received three years’ imprisonment. He contended that the sentence did not adequately reflect information which led police to identify and charge his co-offender, and the risk he incurred. The court considered the governing procedures, the correct sequencing and assessment of informer credit, and the extent to which a sentencer must disclose a reduction made under the confidential text procedure.

1. Royle’s application for leave to appeal against sentence was refused. The sentencing judge was entitled to regard Royle’s assistance as very modest. It was provided while each co-offender sought to place blame on the other. The approximately 11% reduction from the sentence otherwise appropriate was comfortably within the judge’s discretion.

2. The purpose of informer credit is pragmatic. It encourages assistance that may enable serious offenders to be brought to justice. The same rationale applies to the statutory procedure under section 74 of the Sentencing Code and to the common-law text procedure. Assistance ordinarily must be supplied before sentence in the Crown Court. A later appeal is a review of the sentence below, not a fresh sentencing exercise, subject to the limited situation in which pre-sentence assistance proves more valuable than had been expected.

3. The sentencer must first reach the sentence otherwise appropriate after applying the relevant guideline and aggravating and mitigating factors. The sentence is then reduced for assistance, and subsequently for the guilty plea. No conventional reduction is guaranteed. The assessment is fact-specific and turns on the quality, quantity, utility and duration of information; its results; the informer’s co-operation and risk; his own offending; any previous credit; and any financial payment.

4. A text should ordinarily give the matters identified in R v N, including the assistance, risk, benefit to police, payments and future usefulness. Evidence about a text should be exceptional. The text should also state where the informer does not wish legal representatives to know of it or its contents.

5. Rule 28.1 applies only to the statutory procedure. Under the text procedure, section 52 requires a general explanation of sentence but does not require disclosure of the precise reduction or its arithmetic. In the usual case, open disclosure would endanger the informer and discourage future assistance. A written statement may be provided, but present law does not require it. The court invited the Criminal Procedure Rules Committee to consider a possible amendment.

6. The appellate focus is the overall sentence, not a mathematical reconstruction. Intervention is justified only for legal or principled error, a decision outside the proper scope of discretion, or reasoning fundamentally lacking an underlying basis.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): Royle’s application for leave to appeal against sentence was refused in [2023] EWCA Crim 1311. The decisions concerning AJC and BCQ were given in separate closed judgments.

• Crown Court at Norwich: Royle pleaded guilty to robbery and, on 10 March 2023, was sentenced by HHJ Bate to three years’ imprisonment.