Talukder Guideline: Weighting Concurrent Sentences and Using Section-8 Benchmarks for Section-10 Offences Against Children Under 13

Introduction

Case: Talukder, R. v [2025] EWCA Crim 725
Court: England and Wales Court of Appeal (Criminal Division)
Date: 22 May 2025

This appeal—brought by the Solicitor-General under the Unduly Lenient Sentence (ULS) scheme—concerned a series of sexual offences committed by a 23-year-old male carer (the “offender”) against two extremely vulnerable boys aged 11 (V1) and 5 (V2). The Crown Court originally imposed an aggregate sentence of three years’ imprisonment after accepting numerous concurrent terms. The Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) held the sentence to be unduly lenient and substituted a custodial term of eight years.

The judgment is significant because it:

• Clarifies how courts should approach sentencing where the defendant is charged under section 10 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (SOA 2003) even though the victim is under 13—i.e. the facts would satisfy the more serious section 8 offence of “inciting a child under 13”.
• Explains how the totality principle should be applied when there are multiple victims and multiple counts, emphasizing the need to weight concurrent sentences or impose consecutive sentences to reflect additional criminality.
• Re-affirms that Sentencing Council Guidelines are tools, not straitjackets, and that courts may look to adjacent guidelines (here, the section 8 guideline) to gauge the gravity of aggravating features such as a victim’s extreme youth.

Summary of the Judgment

The Court of Appeal allowed the Solicitor-General’s reference and found that the original three-year aggregate term failed to reflect:

• The extreme vulnerability of V1 (severely disabled, non-verbal) and the very young age of V2 (5).
• The egregious breach of trust inherent in the offender’s roles as professional carer and older cousin.
• The presence of two victims, separate episodes, and distinct categories of harm.

Key holdings:

1. Court could not re-label counts 2 and 4 (charged under s.10) as s.8 offences, but was entitled to borrow the section 8 guideline as a frame of reference when assessing seriousness.
2. Concurrent sentences must be weighted to account for additional offending; where there are different victims and episodes, consecutive terms are generally appropriate subject to totality.
3. An appropriate total sentence after trial would have been 12 years; after one-third credit for guilty pleas, eight years’ imprisonment was substituted.

Analysis

A. Precedents Cited and Their Influence

• Unduly Lenient Sentence authorities – The Court reaffirmed the classic principles from Attorney-General’s References (Nos. 14 & 15 of 2006) and subsequent ULS caselaw: the Court’s task is to identify error resulting in a sentence “outside the range” which the judge could properly impose.
• Guideline-flexibility cases – The court cited earlier decisions stressing that Sentencing Council guidelines are not “straitjackets”; cf. R v Chin-Charles [2020] EWCA Crim 1057. These cases paved the way for the Court to deploy the section 8 guideline as a benchmark without re-characterising the offence.
• Totality principle – Reliance was placed on R v Miles [2016] EWCA Crim 233 and R v H & Others [2012] EWCA Crim 2820, confirming that concurrent sentences must be weighted or made consecutive when separate victims/episodes are involved.

B. Legal Reasoning

1. Correct Guideline: Since the defendant actually pleaded to s.10 counts, the s.10 guideline formally governed. However, the Court reasoned that the victims’ ages (both <13) were “highly relevant features” permitting upward movement within or even beyond the s.10 guideline range. Looking at the s.8 guideline was an “illustrative” and principled method to quantify that uplift.
2. Concurrent vs. Consecutive: The judge’s blanket concurrency masked serious additional harm. The Court parsed the offending into two clusters (V1 counts and V2 counts). Because those clusters involved different victims and different dates, concurrency between clusters was inappropriate; consecutive terms better vindicated the totality principle.
3. Weighting of Lead Count: Even where concurrency was permissible within a cluster, the lead count had to be “weighted” upward to reflect the criminality of the subsidiary count(s). Failure to do so was a central error.
4. Quantitative Re-assessment: Deploying the above approach, the Court arrived at notional post-trial figures (8 yrs for V1 cluster + 7 yrs for V2 cluster = 15 yrs) and then performed a holistic totality reduction to 12 yrs. One-third plea deduction yielded 8 yrs, demonstrating stark disparity with the Crown Court’s 3-yr term.

C. Impact of the Judgment

The “Talukder Guideline” is likely to have three major practical effects:

1. Sentencing of s.10 Offences where Victim is Under 13
   CPS charging decisions sometimes adopt section 10 for pragmatic reasons (e.g., evidential complexities). Talukder confirms that sentencers may—and often should—import the section 8 guideline to reflect the greater gravity arising from the victim’s age, ensuring that the statutory maximum for s.10 (14 years) is meaningfully utilised.
2. Totality in Multi-Victim Sexual Cases
   The Court underscores that separate victims ordinarily call for consecutive sentences, or for significant weighting of the lead concurrent sentence. This clarification will influence both prosecution submissions and judicial instinct, countering the risk of “sentence compression” via concurrency.
3. Guideline Flexibility and Reason-Giving
   Judges must articulate why they depart upwards/downwards or use adjacent guidelines. The judgment serves as a blueprint for transparent reasoning, reducing appeal risk and fostering consistency.

Complex Concepts Simplified

Conclusion

Talukder powerfully restates appellate willingness to intervene where concurrent sentencing and mechanistic guideline usage conceal the full gravity of child sexual offences. The Court’s methodology—importing section 8 benchmarks, insisting on proper weighting for concurrency, and providing a coherent totality cross-check—sets a clear template for future cases.

Practitioners should note:

• Charging under section 10 will not necessarily shield an offender from section 8-level sentencing where the victim is under 13.
• Separate victims or episodes generally require consecutive sentences or substantial weighting.
• Judicial reasons must transparently link aggravating features, guideline choices, and totality calculations.

By substituting an eight-year term for the offender, the Court sent a strong signal that protection of society’s most vulnerable demands rigorous, principled sentencing that accurately mirrors harm and culpability—even when prosecutorial charging choices are less than ideal.