Commencing criminal proceedings

Criminal proceedings in magistrates’ courts are commenced in one of the following two ways:

n By way of charge followed by either a bail requirement to attend court or a production at court from police detention.
n By the laying of an information at court followed by the issuing of a summons requiring the defendant’s appearance.

Traditionally, minor infringements of the criminal law and those investigations not requiring or involving a suspect’s arrest or detention at a police station, have been started by the information and summons route. Road traffic offences are classic examples. More serious offences that involve arrest and police detention will normally follow the charge and bail/custody route.
As a general rule, there is no limitation on the time for commencing proceedings for indictable offences. However, in relation to summary offences (i.e. those offences which may only be tried by a magistrates court) proceedings must be commenced by one or other of the above ways within six months from the time when the offence was committed (Section 127 Magistrates’ Court Act 1980).

While the Section refers to the need to lay the information within the time limit, in practice the Section and the time limit are also taken to apply to a summary offence commenced by charge. In substance the information and the charge, once laid/preferred, perform the same function of commencing the proceedings, by setting out formally the offence that the suspect is alleged to have committed.

In relation to proceedings commenced by charge, time will run from the date when the defendant is charged.

In relation to proceedings begun by information, time begins to run from the day the information is received at the relevant magistrates court office
[R v Manchester Stipendiary Magistrates, ex parte Hill 1983 AC 328].
In relation to electronic transmission (the most common method of sending) the information is laid when it is inputted into a computer system at a police station terminal which is linked to the court, even though it is not printed out at the court until later [R v Pontypridd Juvenile Court ex parte B 1988 Cr L R at page 842].

Where there is a doubt as to whether information was laid in time, it is for the prosecution to satisfy the court that it was so laid and the court is entitled to dismiss the case if the prosecution fail to discharge the burden [Lloyd and Young 1963 Cr L R at page 703].
In Atkinson v DPP [2004 EWHC 1457 (Admin)], the divisional court had to consider another variation of the practice for laying informations, operating at Ealing magistrates Court. Here the police entered the details of the offence on to a computer to which both they and the court had access.

The entry was often added to, corrected or varied before all the correct details were present. Once the police considered all the relevant details had been included they ‘validated’ the information. Thereafter the court would print the summons. At the head of the printed summons there was an ‘information date’ which was the date of the initial entry.

Where the police had to make further entries by way of addition or correction then the effective date of laying of the information would be later than that shown on the summons.
The information date printed at the head of the summons issued against Mr Atkinson was inside the six-month limit. However the summons also bore the date on which the information was printed. This date was outside the six-month period.

The divisional court applied the principle in Lloyd and Young and held that, as there was a doubt as to whether the information was laid within the time limit and the prosecution had not discharged its burden of proving compliance with Section 127, the case should have been dismissed. As the court recognised, the consequences of the decision for the police computer system are wide-ranging and clearly, further programming so as to reveal on the summons the date of validation is imperative.

The significance of