Factual and Procedural Background
The Appellant pleaded guilty to eight counts of voyeurism on 7 August 2024 at a magistrates' court and was committed for sentence. On 30 September 2024 at the Crown Court the Appellant was sentenced to 15 months' imprisonment and made subject to a five-year sexual harm prevention order (SHPO); an order for forfeiture and destruction of electronic items was also made. The Appellant challenged only the SHPO on appeal.
The offending came to light when Plaintiff C1 discovered a hidden camera in a bathroom at the Appellant's home after staying there on 19 February 2022. A memory card was found containing multiple clips, including recordings of Plaintiff C1 and others. Subsequent police investigation identified three additional victims described in the opinion as Plaintiff C2, Plaintiff C3 and Plaintiff C4, each of whom was recorded without consent on different occasions. The recordings appear to have been retained for the Appellant's private use; there was no evidence in the material before the court that images had been uploaded or shared online.
The Appellant was reported to be aged 52 at sentence and of previous good character. A pre-sentence report and a prosecution sentencing note were prepared; the prosecution note briefly recorded that an SHPO was pending but did not explain proposed terms or the necessity and proportionality of each term.
Legal Issues Presented
- Whether it was necessary and proportionate for the sentencing court to make the SHPO in the terms proposed, given the Appellant's voyeurism offending.
- Whether terms of the SHPO directed at internet use and social media were justified where there was no evidence of sharing or uploading of images.
- Whether specific restrictions concerning possession and storage of digital images (including cloud storage and device notification/inspection requirements) were necessary and proportionate.
Arguments of the Parties
Prosecution (Attorney Liddiard)
- Notified the court that a draft SHPO had been put on the digital case system and, when pressed, identified retention and storage of images as the conduct the order was intended to address.
- Did not provide detailed, item-by-item submissions on the necessity and proportionality of each proposed term.
Appellant (Attorney Hammond)
- Submitted that the imposition of the SHPO in its entirety was not necessary or proportionate, noting most restrictions concerned internet use despite no internet involvement in the offending.
- Pointed out that the proposed terms were aimed at internet-based offending and were therefore not tailored to the voyeurism in this case.
- Later agreed with the prosecution that a limited number of provisions (notably those addressing storage/retention) could remain; identified two clauses as adequately covering retention and storage.
Table of Precedents Cited
| Precedent |
Rule or Principle Cited For |
Application by the Court |
| R v Parsons & Morgan |
Set out key principles for SHPOs: (i) only make an SHPO if necessary to protect the public from sexual harm; (ii) prohibitions must be effective, clear and realistic; (iii) terms must not be oppressive and must be proportionate; (iv) orders must be tailored to the facts. |
The court applied these principles as the governing framework, stressing the need for necessity, proportionality and tailoring of each term and criticising the sentencing judge for not being taken through each term's necessity and proportionality. |
| NC (supra) |
Re-stated the principle that SHPO terms must not be oppressive and must be proportionate. |
The court relied on this principle as part of the established framework requiring proportional and non-oppressive terms. |
Court's Reasoning and Analysis
The court began from the statutory power to make an SHPO (section 345 of the Sentencing Act 2020) and the requirement in section 346 that an SHPO may be made only if necessary for specified protective purposes. It noted that voyeurism attracting imprisonment is a sexual offence within Schedule 3 to the Sexual Offences Act 2002 and thus can engage the SHPO power.
The court applied the framework from R v Parsons & Morgan: an SHPO must be necessary to protect the public from sexual harm, its prohibitions must be effective, clear, realistic and not oppressive, and the order must be tailored to the facts. Given the statutory maximum penalty for breach (up to five years' imprisonment), the court emphasised that each proposed restriction must be scrutinised for necessity and proportionality.
The court found that prosecuting counsel had not, save for a brief contention about storage of images, addressed why each draft term was necessary and proportionate in light of the Appellant's offending. The sentencing judge accepted the draft terms wholesale, justifying them as aimed at preventing uploading of images to the internet, but there was no evidence that images had been uploaded or shared. The court concluded that most terms restricting internet use or social media were not tailored to the offending and therefore were neither necessary nor proportionate.
Applying the statutory test term-by-term, the court quashed paragraphs 1–6 and 9–13 of the SHPO as unnecessary and disproportionate. By contrast, it upheld paragraphs 7 and 8 — provisions requiring the Appellant to notify police within three days of acquiring devices capable of storing digital images, to make such devices available for inspection, to refrain from deleting images (subject to police discretion to delete), and to notify and provide access to remote electronic (cloud) storage — as necessary and proportionate given the number and period of recordings and storage behaviour.
The court therefore replaced the existing order with a new SHPO of the same five-year duration containing only the two storage-related restrictions (the former paragraphs 7 and 8).
Holding and Implications
The court quashed the existing sexual harm prevention order insofar as it contained broad internet and social media restrictions (paragraphs 1–6 and 9–13) and replaced it with a five-year SHPO limited to the two restrictions addressing possession and remote storage of digital images (the provisions described as paragraphs 7 and 8).
Direct effect: The Appellant remains subject to a five-year SHPO, but only with the agreed and upheld requirements concerning notification to police and police inspection of devices and cloud accounts storing digital images. The broader internet- and social-media-related prohibitions were removed.
No broader precedent was established beyond the application of the existing authorities and statutory tests; the decision emphasises adherence to the Parsons & Morgan principles and the need for prosecution-led, term-by-term justification of SHPO restrictions.