Consecutive Sentences in UK Law

However, at the end of the day, as one always must, one looks at the totality and asks whether it was too much.

The question for decision is whether the restriction on the range of sentences can properly be circumvented in situations like this, where the offender was found in possession of more than one gun, or, and no less important, a combination of guns and appropriate ammunition for use with them which came in to his possession on a single occasion and which were kept hidden and were found in the same hiding place, by an order for consecutive sentences.

The aggregate of the sentences must be appropriate to the offender's criminality in the context of the available mitigation. Second, consecutive terms should not normally be imposed for offences which arise out of the same incident or transaction. However there is sometimes a difficulty in deciding whether criminality under consideration may or may not be regarded as a single incident. The fact that offences are committed simultaneously is not necessarily conclusive.

In the context of a narrow range of available sentencing powers, and in particular the statutory maximum sentence, we are in reality being invited to circumvent the statutory maximum sentence on the basis that we believe it to be too low and to achieve our objective by disapplying well understood sentencing principles of which Parliament must be deemed to have been aware when the statutory maximum and minimum sentence was fixed.

We share the view expressed in that case that it is undesirable to impose consecutive indeterminate sentences or order an indeterminate sentence to be served consecutively to another period of imprisonment. Common sense suggests that a sentence of life imprisonment or of IPP starts immediately on its imposition.

While it is lawful to impose consecutive extended determinate sentences under section 226A of the 2003 Act, the court should always make it clear as to which offences those sentences are being attributed as it is the overall extended determinate sentences that must be consecutive and not just the custodial terms. We have considered R v Pinnell and Joyce [2010] EWCA Crim 2848, at paragraph 48 and R v Francis and Lawrence [2014] EWCA Crim 631, at paragraphs 50–57.

When offenders are to be sentenced for several offences only some of which are specified, the court which imposes an indeterminate sentence under sections 225 or 226 or an extended sentence under sections 227 or 228, for the principal offences should generally impose a shorter concurrent sentence for the other offences.