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	England and Wales Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) Decisions
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) Decisions >> Crutchley, R. v [2025] EWCA Crim 228 (19 February 2025) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2025/228.html Cite as: [2025] EWCA Crim 228

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IN THE COURT OF APPEAL
CRIMINAL DIVISION
ON APPEAL FROM THE CROWN COURT AT WARWICK
HHJ POTTER

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand London WC2A 2LL
		19 February 2025

LORD JUSTICE DINGEMANS:

Introduction

1. This is an appeal against sentence brought with the leave of the single judge. The appeal raises an issue about the correct categorisation of an offence of burglary of a non-dwelling.
2. The appellant Jamie Crutchley is a 43-year-old man. He had before the offences the subject of this appeal 36 convictions for 104 offences. There were eight previous offences of burglary and other offences of robbery, theft and handling.
3. Mr Crutchley had stopped offending after 2013 until late in March 2023 when he threatened a shop worker with a screwdriver and then in November 2023 when he stole from a shop. We were told this morning by Mr Charvill, to whom we are grateful for his written and oral submissions, that the reason that Mr Crutchley had relapsed into offending was that he lost a friend and instead of taking his medication had started to take drugs again. Mr Crutchley had been sentenced on 5 February 2024 to 12 months' imprisonment suspended for those offences of theft and threatening the shop worker.
4. On 16 July 2024, at a time when he was entitled to 10 per cent credit, Mr Crutchley pleaded guilty in the Crown Court at Warwick to an offence of non-dwelling-house burglary which took place between 16 and 21 February 2024 and an offence of handling stolen goods which took place in March 2024. Both those offences occurred very shortly after the suspended sentence had been imposed on 5 February 2024.
5. Mr Crutchley was sentenced on the same day to 27 months' imprisonment for the burglary, nine months' imprisonment concurrent for the handling stolen goods and nine months of the suspended sentence was brought into force. This gave an overall sentence of three years.
6. So far as the burglary is concerned, on a date between 16 and 21 February 2024, Mr Crutchley forced entry to 25 Station Road, Atherstone. It appears that he went to the back of the building and removed a board on the back door. At that time the property was undergoing extensive renovations and was unoccupied. The appellant removed tools and other items worth over £1,500. That caused the occupier considerable delays in the renovation work because the tools had been lost and needed to be replaced. Mr Crutchley was arrested soon after and released on bail. He claimed in police interview that he had permission to take items from the skip.
7. So far as the handling stolen goods was concerned, a few weeks later in March 2024, £30 was taken from a piggy bank which had been in the property of Elizabeth Earp who was the mother of Mr Crutchley's partner. Mr Crutchley was found in possession of the money a short time afterwards and the mother was dealing with issues at the time of the hospitalisation of her husband (who had dementia) and the judge referred to this as a "very mean-spirited offence".
8. When sentencing, the judge treated the burglary as the lead offence. The judge said that it was either culpability A or on the cusp of B and A. It was not a burglary that involved an enormous amount of planning but Mr Crutchley was plainly looking for things to steal. It was Category 1 harm aggravated by the previous convictions, the theft a few weeks later and the breach of the suspended sentence. There was no mitigation and the plea was on the day of the trial.
9. So far as this appeal is concerned, culpability A under the Sentencing Council offence-specific guidelines requires a significant degree of planning or organisation. Medium culpability B requires some degree of planning or organisation. Category 1 is theft of or damage to a property causing a substantial degree of loss to the victim, whether economic, commercial, cultural or of personal value and Category 2 was theft of or damage to property causing a moderate degree of loss to the victim, whether economic, commercial, cultural or of personal value. A non-domestic burglary Category A1 has a starting point of 24 months with a range of one to five years and a Category B1 has a range of one year with a high level community order to two years as a range. A Category B2 offence has a six month starting point with a medium level community order to one year range.
10. As far as handling stolen goods are concerned, a Category A4 offence has a starting point of a high level community order with a range of a medium level community order to 26 weeks' imprisonment.
11. In our judgment, this was clearly a Culpability B burglary from a non-dwelling-house. This is because there was some degree of planning or organisation, going round to the back of the house and removing the boarded-up door, but it would not be fair to describe that as a significant degree of planning or organisation because the appellant Mr Crutchley had simply removed the door. We accept that the judge was right to categorise this as Category 1. This was because there was a substantial degree of loss to the property owner, which was the loss of the tools and the subsequent disruption to the refurbishment of the house.
12. In those circumstances, rather than a starting point of 24 months (with a range of one to five years), this was a B1 offence with a starting point of one year (and a range of a high level community order to two years). The aggravating factors of the appellant's very poor record and the fact that this was an offence committed in breach of a suspended order substantially outweighed the mitigating factors, giving a sentence of 18 months before discount for plea.
13. As far as the handling stolen goods was concerned, that had a range of a medium level community order to 26 weeks' imprisonment. The judge was entitled to go to the top of the range, describing this as a "mean-spirited offence", of six months, but some discount had to be made for totality and therefore a reduction to three months is appropriate. We will add that to the sentence, as the judge did, for burglary to keep that as the main offence, and we make the theft sentence concurrent. That gives a sentence of 21 months for the burglary offence (18 months plus 3 months) with three months concurrent for the handling offence. From that needs to be deducted the 10 per cent credit for guilty plea, which takes it down to 18 months.
14. The activation of the suspended sentence of nine months consecutive was correct in principle, and remains as it was.
15. This means that the appellant's appeal succeeds to the extent that the overall sentence is now one of 27 months, being 18 months for the burglary offence, plus nine months for the activation of the suspended sentence. This gives a sentence of two years and three months, rather than an overall sentence of three years. All other orders remain as before.