Consecutive Sentences Must Be Adjusted Where Necessary to Achieve Overall Proportionality

1. Introduction

This decision concerns the application of the totality principle when an offender is sentenced for a second offence while still serving a determinate prison sentence for an earlier offence. The Court of Appeal confirmed that a sentence may be appropriate when considered individually, and properly ordered to run consecutively, yet still produce an excessive overall term.

The appellant committed two shop robberies less than three weeks apart. Different judges sentenced him on separate occasions. The second judge imposed 27 months’ imprisonment consecutively to an existing 21-month sentence, producing an aggregate term of 48 months.

The Court of Appeal reduced the second sentence to 21 months, leaving it consecutive and producing an aggregate term of 42 months. The judgment is principally a reaffirmation and application of the existing Totality guideline, rather than the creation of a new sentencing rule.

2. Background and Sentencing History

The first robbery

On 23 May 2025, the appellant attempted to leave a B&M store in Swansea with approximately £130 of unpaid goods. When the manager intervened, he drew an object from his pocket and threatened the manager. Although the object was initially thought to be a knife or screwdriver, it was a vape. His guilty plea accepted that his conduct caused the manager to fear the use of force.

On 26 November 2025, the Crown Court at Newport imposed 21 months’ imprisonment. The sentence before guilty-plea credit was 28 months, reduced by 25 per cent. The Court of Appeal described that allowance, given a plea on the first day of trial, as generous. The first sentence had already been upheld on appeal.

The aggravating features included 37 previous convictions involving 97 offences, 76 of which were theft or similar offences, predominantly involving shops. There was no previous robbery conviction. The first robbery was also committed while the appellant was on licence.

Accepted mitigation included personal circumstances, remorse and efforts to change his life, including remaining drug-free for approximately four years.

The second robbery

On 11 June 2025, the appellant attempted to leave a Sainsbury’s store in Swansea without paying for goods worth £463.70, mainly alcohol. When a shop assistant challenged him, he adopted a confrontational stance and punched the assistant in the jaw. He then left without paying despite other staff intervening.

The assistant suffered bruising but did not require medical treatment. The sentencing judge placed the offence in category C3 of the less sophisticated commercial robbery guideline: the lowest categories of culpability and harm. The absence of a weapon and the limited force supported category C culpability; the effects on the victim and business supported category 3 harm.

The guideline starting point was 12 months’ imprisonment, with a range extending to three years. The judge moved to the top of that range because of the appellant’s record, his disregard of staff warnings and the brazenness of the offending. Delay and efforts towards rehabilitation in custody were also considered.

On 9 June 2026, the Crown Court at Swansea imposed 27 months’ imprisonment, reduced from 36 months by 25 per cent for a guilty plea at the plea and trial preparation hearing. The term was consecutive to the first sentence, which the appellant was still serving. A five-year restraining order was also imposed.

No pre-sentence report had been obtained for either sentencing exercise. The Court of Appeal agreed that none was necessary. It also had a favourable prison report dated 20 August 2026.

3. Issues and Outcome on Appeal

The appellant advanced three grounds, which raised two substantive issues:

• whether insufficient weight had been given to delay in investigating and prosecuting the second robbery; and
• whether the combined prison term failed to reflect the totality principle.

The Court of Appeal found merit in the totality arguments. The sentencing judge had neither mentioned totality nor referred to the Totality guideline. Neither party appeared to have addressed it in oral submissions or written sentencing notes.

The court nevertheless considered that both individual sentences were defensible when examined separately. It also approved the decision to make the second sentence consecutive. The error was the failure to adjust the aggregate punishment to reflect the offending as a whole.

The appeal was allowed. The court quashed the second sentence of 27 months and substituted 21 months. The judgment did not disturb the restraining order.

4. Precedents and Sentencing Guidance

No separately identified judicial precedents

The judgment cites no named judicial authorities. It mentions that the first robbery sentence had previously been upheld on appeal, but provides no case title, citation or substantive account of that decision. That earlier appeal therefore supplies procedural background rather than a separately analysed precedent.

The reasoning instead rests on the Sentencing Council’s Totality guideline, read alongside the applicable robbery guideline.

The Totality guideline

The directly applicable guidance concerns an offender receiving a determinate sentence while already serving an earlier determinate sentence, where the new offence was committed after the offence previously sentenced. That precisely matched the appellant’s position.

The guidance generally favours a consecutive sentence because the offences arise from unrelated incidents. However, it also requires the second sentencing court to assess the totality of the offender’s criminality and ensure that the combined sentence is just and proportionate.

A further passage explains that simply adding the notional sentences for individual offences will usually fail to produce a proportionate consecutive sentence. Ordinarily, some downward adjustment is needed. This was central to the appeal: the sentencing court had accumulated the individual terms without undertaking the necessary overall assessment.

The quoted guidance also notes that reductions for totality are likely to be minimal where a prisoner commits violence in custody. That qualification did not apply here: both robberies preceded the appellant’s imprisonment for the first offence.

The robbery guideline

The robbery guideline provided the framework for assessing the second offence’s individual seriousness. The Court of Appeal did not disturb its category C3 classification or criticise the original sentence when viewed alone. The appeal therefore demonstrates that correct application of an offence-specific guideline does not complete the exercise where another sentence must also be considered.

5. Analysis of the Court’s Reasoning

Individual proportionality and overall proportionality are distinct

The central distinction is between the appropriate punishment for each offence and the appropriate punishment for all the offending together. A sentencing court must answer both questions.

Here, neither robbery sentence was objectionable in isolation. Nevertheless, their unadjusted accumulation produced a total which the Court of Appeal regarded as disproportionate. Totality was therefore a substantive part of determining the lawful overall punishment, not an optional expression of leniency.

A consecutive sentence does not remove the need for adjustment

The court expressly accepted that the second sentence should be consecutive. These were separate incidents involving different stores and victims. But choosing consecutive rather than concurrent sentences did not resolve the question of overall length.

The practical solution was to preserve the consecutive structure while reducing the second term. This recognised the distinct criminality of the second robbery without retaining an excessive aggregate sentence.

Why the relationship between the offences mattered

The court emphasised three features:

• the robberies were of the same nature;
• they occurred very close together; and
• largely the same aggravating and mitigating circumstances applied to both.

Those features supported treating the offences as a closely related body of criminality for the purpose of assessing overall punishment. Separate sentencing hearings did not remove that relationship.

The judgment does not establish that such offences must receive identical sentences. The equal final terms resulted from this particular assessment of totality, not from a rule requiring parity between closely timed offences.

The sentencing court remained responsible despite counsel’s omission

Neither prosecution nor defence appears to have raised totality. That did not prevent the Court of Appeal from correcting the sentence. The judgment consequently underlines the sentencing court’s responsibility to apply the relevant guidance even where the parties’ submissions are incomplete.

The absence of any reference to totality was significant because it was accompanied by an aggregate sentence which the appellate court found disproportionate. The decision should not be reduced to a rule that failure to use the word “totality” automatically invalidates a sentence.

Totality was applied before guilty-plea credit

Before guilty-plea reductions, the original sentences totalled 64 months: 28 months for the first robbery and 36 months for the second. The respective 25 per cent reductions produced 48 months.

The court reduced the second robbery’s sentence before plea credit from 36 to 28 months. Applying the unchanged 25 per cent allowance then produced 21 months, and an overall term of 42 months.

This calculation keeps the two adjustments distinct. Totality addresses proportionate overall punishment; guilty-plea credit rewards the plea. The reduction on appeal did not arise from increasing the plea allowance.

The limited treatment of delay

The successful reasoning concerned totality, not delay. Although the original judge had considered delay, the Court of Appeal did not develop a separate rule about when delayed prosecution requires a sentencing reduction.

The transcript also contains an apparent chronological inconsistency: paragraph 7 places the CCTV identification on 1 August 2026, after both the stated December 2025 interview and June 2026 sentence. The text does not resolve that discrepancy. It would therefore be unsafe to derive precise investigative timings from it. The inconsistency does not affect the court’s stated reasoning on totality.

6. Significance and Potential Impact

The judgment is particularly useful where offences committed close together are prosecuted or sentenced separately. It confirms that the later court must look beyond the sentence appropriate for the offence immediately before it and assess the aggregate punishment.

Its practical implications include:

• A separate overall assessment: guideline compliance for each offence does not, by itself, establish that the combined sentence is proportionate.
• Clear sentencing submissions: advocates should identify any existing sentence, explain its relationship to the new offence and address the resulting aggregate term.
• Transparent reasoning: sentencing remarks should explain the treatment of totality, particularly where consecutive terms are imposed.
• Adjustment without concurrency: reducing a consecutive term may be the appropriate means of achieving proportionality.
• No fixed discount: the six-month reduction in the final sentence was case-specific, not a prescribed totality allowance.

The decision does not require a reduction in every consecutive-sentence case. The guideline’s approach is contextual: an adjustment is ordinarily needed, but its necessity and size depend on the overall criminality. Nor does the judgment decide wider questions about restraining orders, pre-sentence reports or delay.

7. Complex Concepts Simplified

Totality

A final check that punishment for several offences, taken together, is fair and proportionate—not simply the mathematical sum of individually reasonable sentences.

Consecutive and concurrent sentences

Consecutive sentences run one after another. Concurrent sentences overlap. A court can retain consecutive sentences while reducing their lengths to achieve a proportionate total.

Determinate sentence

A prison sentence with a fixed length, rather than an indeterminate sentence such as life imprisonment.

Notional individual sentence

The sentence an offence would attract if assessed on its own, before adjustment for the combined effect of other sentences.

Culpability and harm

Culpability concerns the offender’s blameworthiness; harm concerns the offence’s effects. Together they help determine the relevant guideline category.

Guilty-plea credit

A reduction for pleading guilty. It serves a different purpose from a totality adjustment and must remain analytically separate.

8. Conclusion

The Court of Appeal reaffirmed that consecutive sentencing requires an assessment of overall proportionality. Individually defensible sentences cannot simply be added together where doing so produces excessive punishment.

Reducing the second robbery sentence from 27 to 21 months preserved separate punishment for each offence while bringing the aggregate term down to 42 months. The essential lesson is that totality remains a distinct and necessary sentencing exercise, including when closely timed offences reach different courts on different occasions.