Summary of Court Opinion
Factual and Procedural Background
This is an application by the Solicitor General under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 seeking review of a sentence imposed by Judge Fanning at The City Crown Court on 10 September 2025. The Solicitor General submits the sentence was unduly lenient and should be increased. The Defendant pleaded guilty at the first available opportunity in the Magistrates' Court and was committed to the Crown Court for sentence. There were 22 charges in total.
The judge imposed a two year term of imprisonment as the operative sentence by assessing a notional trial sentence of three years and then allowing maximum credit for early guilty pleas. The judge considered suspension but concluded suspension would be wrong because prospects of rehabilitation were extremely poor and only immediate custody could provide appropriate punishment. A Sexual Harm Prevention Order of 15 years and other ancillary orders were made.
The offences included multiple counts of making/possession and distribution of indecent images of children across Categories A, B and C, an offence of publication of an obscene article, an offence of possession of extreme pornographic images, and four offences for failing to comply with notification requirements arising from the Defendant's creation of accounts under false names to communicate with others. The images and messages were recovered from the Defendant's phone and a USB drive; collection occurred over a multi-year period. The Defendant is 50 years old and has a previous conviction recorded in The Country in 2011 for making indecent images of children.
Legal Issues Presented
- Whether the sentence imposed by Judge Fanning was unduly lenient and should be increased under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988.
- Whether the four notification-offence counts should have been categorised as harm category 1 rather than category 2 for the purposes of the sentencing guideline for failing to comply with notification requirements.
- Whether the overall sentence should have included a greater uplift to reflect the length of time over which the offending occurred and the volume/seriousness of offending.
- Whether the totality and guilty-plea discounting approach adopted by the judge produced an appropriate overall sentence.
Arguments of the Parties
Solicitor General's (Attorney Pope) Arguments
- The categorisation of the four notification offences as involving category 2 harm was too low; they should have been category 1, warranting a longer overall term (either by higher concurrent terms or by consecutive sentences).
- The overall sentence lacked an adequate uplift to reflect the long duration and volume of offending.
- Overall, the sentence did not reflect the overall seriousness of the offences.
Defence (Attorney Rogerson) Arguments
- While the period of non-compliance was long (culpability A), the harm from the notification breaches was less direct than the Solicitor General contends because notification requirements arise from a wide range of sexual offences; the breaches here did not directly enable contact offending causing very serious harm.
- There was no contact offending; the judge correctly took that into account when structuring the sentence and assessing totality and discount for plea.
Table of Precedents Cited
No precedents were cited in the provided opinion.
Court's Reasoning and Analysis
The court examined sentencing guideline material published by the Sentencing Council: the guideline for possession/making of indecent images of children, the guideline for failing to comply with notification provisions, the totality guideline and the guideline on reduction for guilty pleas. The judge assessed the appropriate notional sentence for the most serious Category A images at the top of that category (three years) because of the number, duration of collection, visible pain/distress, active involvement in a network, and large number of victims. The judge then applied maximum credit for early guilty pleas to reach the operative two year term.
For the notification breaches the judge accepted that culpability A applied because of the long period of non-compliance. The central dispute was harm categorisation: Solicitor General argued for category 1 on the basis that such breaches fuel demand for images and thereby contribute to very serious contact offending; defence argued the harm was less direct and category 2 was appropriate. The judge selected category A2 (harm category 2) because the harm, while real, was less direct than category 1 requires.
The judge considered suspension and rejected it given extremely poor prospects of rehabilitation and the seriousness of the offending. The judge structured the sentence using concurrent terms rather than consecutive terms and directed that the proportionate overall sentence after discount for plea was two years' imprisonment.
The reviewing court (this court) accepted that the judge's sentencing conclusions placed the sentence at the lower end of what was appropriate and that a higher notional sentence (for example four years before plea discount) would have been open to the sentencing judge. However, because the discrepancy between that approach and the judge's approach (three years notional before credit) produced only a modest difference in the final term after equivalent discounting, the court concluded the sentencing judge's approach was within the legitimate range of discretionary choices and was not unduly lenient.
Holding and Implications
Application to increase the sentence refused.
Leave to bring the application was granted to the Solicitor General, but the court declined to increase the sentence. The operative sentence imposed by Judge Fanning—two years' immediate imprisonment after credit for early pleas—remains in force and the judge's discretionary choices about categorisation, structure (concurrent terms) and totality were held to fall within the available range. The opinion records that no new precedent was established by this decision.