Summary of Court Opinion

Factual and Procedural Background

On 17 December 2024, at the Crown Court at The City, the Appellant pleaded guilty on re‑arraignment to an offence of causing grievous bodily harm with intent contrary to section 18 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. The plea was entered on the second day of trial after the Complainant had given evidence. The trial judge, Judge Smith, sentenced the Appellant to 6 years 3 months' imprisonment on the same day and made restraining orders to protect the Complainant and three witnesses. The judge imposed no separate custodial penalty for related driving offences (taking a conveyance without authority and driving without insurance), but endorsed the Appellant's driving licence and disqualified him from driving for a total period of 44 months and ordered payment of the statutory surcharge. The Appellant appealed against sentence with leave.

Factual summary: The Appellant and the Complainant began a relationship in February 2024 after meeting via an online dating application; the Complainant moved into the Appellant's flat in April 2024 and had moved out by early June 2024 but they were still seeing each other intermittently. On 28 June 2024, following an argument in the Appellant's flat in The City, the Complainant was assaulted: she sustained multiple blows to the head, was kicked and stamped on, had laundry forced into her mouth causing gagging and breathing difficulties, and was threatened. Neighbours intervened, forced entry, and the Complainant escaped; the Appellant then took the Complainant's car without consent and drove it without insurance.

The Complainant was hospitalised for 13 days with multiple rib fractures (including a flail fracture), a punctured right lung requiring a chest drain, collections of blood around the chest and forehead, and multiple bruises. A victim personal statement made about six months later recorded ongoing physical and mental health effects. In interview the Appellant admitted striking the Complainant but sought to explain the injuries by an alternative account. The Appellant was aged 51 and had previous convictions from 1999–2007 for offences including assaulting a police constable and public order/battery offences.

Legal Issues Presented

1. Whether the sentencing judge erred in selecting a notional starting point and intermediate sentence that were, in substance, outside the applicable category range for a category B3 offence of causing grievous bodily harm with intent.
2. Whether increasing the notional sentence on account of the domestic context amounted to impermissible double counting.
3. Whether insufficient weight was given to mitigation, including the late guilty plea and the Appellant's psychological/psychiatric reports (including diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder and ADHD), rendering the overall sentence manifestly excessive.
4. Whether the Crown Court record of the Appellant's period of driving disqualification should be corrected to reflect the appropriate formulation and total period under the Road Traffic Offenders Act provisions (and related statutory provisions).

Arguments of the Parties

Appellant's Arguments

• The judge, having correctly placed the offence in category B3, adopted a starting point (notional intermediate sentence) of 5 years 9 months which was too high.
• The judge's decision to increase the notional sentence to 7 years to reflect the domestic context constituted double counting.
• The judge failed to give sufficient weight to mitigation, including the late guilty plea and the Appellant's psychological difficulties (autism spectrum disorder, ADHD and some depression), so the sentence was manifestly excessive.

Respondent's Arguments

This information was not available in the provided opinion.

Table of Precedents Cited

Precedent	Rule or Principle Cited For	Application by the Court
Precedent A ([2016] EWCA Crim 455; [2016] 1 WLR 4449)	Guidance on how Crown Court disqualification records should express periods of disqualification when calculating uplift/extension under the relevant Road Traffic provisions.	The court directed that the Crown Court record be amended so the disqualification is expressed as a single total (44 months), comprising an initial discretionary period (12 months) and an uplift (32 months) under the applicable statutory provision, following the guidance in the cited authority.

Court's Reasoning and Analysis

The court examined the sentencing judge's intermediate workings and the notional sentence adopted after trial by working backwards from the final sentence and the 5% credit applied for the late guilty plea. That calculation showed the judge's notional sentence after trial exceeded the category range for a category B3 offence (category range up to 6 years). The central question was whether, on the facts, the judge was entitled to pass a sentence outside the category range for a B3 assault.

The court analysed culpability and harm under the offence‑specific guidelines. The sentencing judge had described the assault as prolonged and persistent (lasting about 10 minutes) involving kicking, stamping, punching and forcing material into the Complainant's mouth; the appellate court concluded that that high culpability factor would have justified treating the offence as category A. On harm, the court agreed with the judge that the injuries (multiple bilateral rib fractures including a flail fracture, punctured lung and other injuries) were at the borderline between category 2 (grave injury) and category 3 (really serious harm), and that this positioning was correct.

The court explained that elevating either culpability or harm (but not both) would have resulted in a raised starting point of 5 years and a category range up to 7 years, which would have placed the judge's notional sentence within range. The judge, however, had given the Appellant the benefit of the doubt on both culpability and harm but nonetheless treated the prolonged and persistent nature of the attack, the extent of the harm, and the domestic context as aggravating factors. The court accepted that the domestic context properly aggravated the offending because it involved betrayal of trust in an intimate relationship and the assault occurred in the home that had been shared by the parties.

On mitigation, the court observed there was little. The psychiatric and psychological reports recorded some depression and diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder and ADHD. The court accepted that these conditions might affect rigidity of thinking or propensity to ruminate (autism) and quickness to temper (ADHD), but concluded the violent and sustained nature of the assault was not explained by a sudden loss of temper and that these factors did not materially excuse the offending. The court therefore agreed the judge was entitled to give limited mitigation weight to those matters.

Regarding credit for the guilty plea, the court noted the plea was entered on the second day of trial after the Complainant had given evidence. Sentencing Council guidance permits a maximum 10% reduction on the day of trial, but once trial has commenced credit should be reduced and may be zero. The court concluded the judge was generous to allow 5% credit and that, under the guidelines, no credit could reasonably have been given.

On the driving disqualification, the Registrar had pointed out that because no custodial sentence was imposed for the underlying road traffic offence, the applicable statutory provisions required the court to treat the disqualification under section 35B rather than section 35A. The judge had intended the initial discretionary disqualification period of 12 months to run from release, but that intention was not achieved because section 244ZA of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 affected the Appellant's eligibility for automatic release (two‑thirds rule). The appellate court held it could not treat the Appellant more severely on appeal, and therefore the total disqualification must remain 44 months; but it directed correction of the Crown Court record to express the disqualification appropriately as 44 months (12 months initial plus 32 months uplift) in line with the cited precedent.

Holding and Implications

APPEAL DISMISSED

Holding: The court dismissed the Appellant's appeal against sentence. The appellate court concluded that, given the aggravating factors (prolonged and persistent nature of the assault, harm on the borderline between categories 2 and 3, and the domestic context), the sentencing judge's approach and the resulting sentence—being slightly above the category B3 range—were not wrong in principle or manifestly excessive. The court also upheld the judge's decision to allow limited credit (5%) for the late guilty plea.

Implications: The direct consequence of the decision is that the 6 years 3 months custodial sentence stands and the appeal is dismissed. The court directed a correction of the Crown Court record so the driving disqualification is expressed as 44 months in total (initial discretionary period of 12 months plus an uplift of 32 months under the relevant statutory provision), following the guidance in the cited authority. The opinion does not purport to create a new precedent beyond the application of existing sentencing and statutory principles.