Skip to navigation Skip to content

Forthcoming guidelines

Dangerous dog offences definitive guideline

Following a 12 week consultation the Sentencing Council is publishing its new definitive guideline on dangerous dog offences, which has been issued in accordance with section 120 (4) of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009.

This guideline applies to all offenders aged 18 and over. It applies to all cases that are dealt with on or after 20 August 2012, regardless of when the offence was committed.

All sentencers will receive hard copies of the guidelines.

We are also publishing a response to the consultation which summarises some of the very useful feedback and comments we received. We have greatly benefited from the consultation process and have improved some of the detail of the guideline in response to comments received.

A revised resource assessment and equality impact assessment have also been produced to support the definitive guideline.

A press release is also available.

Allocation, offences taken into consideration and totality definitive guideline

Following a 12 week consultation the Sentencing Council is publishing its new definitive guideline on allocation, offences taken into consideration and totality, which has been issued in accordance with section 120 (4) of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009.

This guideline applies to all offenders aged 18 and over. It applies to all cases that are dealt with on or after 11 June 2012, regardless of when the offence was committed.

As with its other guidelines, the Council recognises the need to ensure a consistency of approach across all the courts which will be using these guidelines, whilst being careful not to include material which would rarely or never be used in one or other jurisdiction. For this reason, the Crown Court version of the guideline will not include the allocation guideline and the version of the totality guideline for inclusion in the Magistrates’ Court Sentencing Guidelines will not include the specific application sections on extended sentences for public protection or indeterminate sentences, as magistrates cannot pass these sentences.

All sentencers will receive hard copies of the guidelines.

This update also includes revised relevant weekly income figures on pages 148, 149 and 155 which take immediate effect. The revised figures have been calculated taking account of the increases to the minimum wage, job seekers' allowance and median level of pre-tax income since the previous figures were calculated.

The update also contains some other revisions to the Explanatory material in Part 5 to take account of the introduction of the new overarching guidelines.
 
There was an error within the importation guideline on page 229 of the drug offence guidelines issued in update 6 and this has been corrected in this update.

We are also publishing a response to the consultation which summarises some of the very useful feedback and comments we received. We have greatly benefited from the consultation process and have improved some of the detail of the guideline in response to comments received.

A revised resource assessment and equality impact assessment have also been produced to support the definitive guideline.

A research bulletin looking into decision making relating to the allocation of ‘triable either way’ cases to magistrates’ courts or Crown Court has also been produced. This has been used to inform the development of a guideline on allocation. All research and analysis publications can be found here.

A press release is also available.