R v Samuel Liam Dixon

When an offender has been remanded on bail subject to a qualifying curfew and electronic monitoring, the sentencing court must specify the credit period under sections 325 and 326 of the Sentencing Act 2020. That obligation applies when a suspended sentence is activated, because activation is treated as a determinate sentence imposed on the activation date. Credit is calculated by the statutory steps, ordinarily producing half the qualifying-curfew days after any required deductions. On a sentence appeal, the court may adjust the activated term to prevent double recovery, provided the appellant is not more severely dealt with overall.

The appellant pleaded guilty to breach of a restraining order and possession of a class B controlled drug. The offences occurred during the operational period of a suspended sentence order imposed for earlier assaults. At the Crown Court at Liverpool, the judge activated seven months of each of two consecutive ten-month terms after treating four months of qualifying curfew as warranting a two-month reduction in each term. The judge did not specify the statutory credit period or certify the number of qualifying-curfew days. After the slip-rule period expired, the appellant appealed. The central issues were whether activation triggered the certification duty and how the Court of Appeal should avoid double recovery.

The court granted the 97-day extension of time and allowed the appeal to the extent set out below.

1. Statutory duty. Sections 325(1) and 326(3) of the Sentencing Act 2020 applied because the appellant had been on bail subject to qualifying-curfew and electronic-monitoring conditions in the earlier proceedings. Under section 325(6)(a), activation of the suspended sentence was treated as the imposition of a determinate sentence on the activation date. The activation was under paragraph 13(1)(b) of Schedule 16, allowing a lesser term. Section 325(2) therefore imposed a mandatory duty to specify the credit period.
2. Calculation. The correct qualifying-curfew period was 122 days. No deductions under steps 2 or 3 of section 325(3) were identified. Dividing 122 by two produced 61 days, which had to be certified in open court as time served.
3. Double recovery. The sentencing judge had intended to activate eight months of each consecutive ten-month sentence, but reduced each to seven months after the exchange about curfew credit. Declaring 61 days without revising the activated terms would therefore give the appellant double recovery. The court could restore the terms to eight months each under section 11(3) of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968, because the overall result would remain neutral and the appellant would not be more severely dealt with on appeal.
4. Order. The activated sentences were increased to eight months each, consecutive to the four-month sentence for breach of the restraining order, making 20 months' imprisonment in total. The court certified that 61 days counted towards that sentence for qualifying-curfew time. Time spent on remand in the earlier and later proceedings should also count towards the sentence in the usual way.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): granted an extension of time and varied the sentence by restoring the activated terms to eight months each, while certifying 61 days' qualifying-curfew credit. [2026] EWCA Crim 660.
• Crown Court at Liverpool: on 7 November 2025, activated seven months of each of two consecutive ten-month sentences and imposed four months' imprisonment for breach of the restraining order, producing a total of 18 months without a formal qualifying-curfew certificate.