Held, claim dismissed. (1) Section 24A of the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980 had been introduced by the Criminal Justice Act 2003 to provide a mechanism by which the youth court could commit for sentence a child or young person where a sentence in excess of two years’ detention ought to be available. Such committal could only occur if the indication were given at the first appearance when allocation for trial was to be considered, that being the meaning of “appears or is brought before the court”. Section 24A could not affect the jurisdiction of the youth court to try indictable offences summarily, rather, it provided the jurisdiction to commit for sentence rather than deal with the case summarily. Were the youth court to purport to commit a defendant for sentence when he appeared or was brought before the court without engaging in the plea before venue procedure, it would be acting without jurisdiction. Beyond that, section 24A did not serve to protect any right of the defendant. A defendant in the youth court had no right to elect trial. Save where the court declined jurisdiction, a defendant in the youth court would be tried summarily. Further, since 2015, section 24A was no longer the only route by which the youth court could commit for sentence. That at no stage had Parliament intended that a failure to comply with the procedure set out in section 24A should remove the jurisdiction of the youth court to try indictable offences summarily and the judge had been entitled to consider the appropriate venue for trial irrespective of any procedural failing (paras 22–24).

(2) It followed that, since any failure to comply with section 24A of the 1980 Act was procedural, the only basis for a challenge to the allocation was if it had affected the fairness of the proceedings or prejudiced the claimant. Given that the claimant, if asked, would have indicated a plea of not guilty, the judge would have moved on to consider venue precisely as he had done. Whilst the court was not suggesting that failing to provide a defendant with the opportunity to indicate a plea of guilty, a procedure designed to improve efficiency, was a course to be approved, on the facts of the present case the failure had had no practical effect (para 25).

(3) As to whether the judge ought to have retained jurisdiction for the claimant’s trial, the test was whether there was a real prospect that the offender might require a sentence in excess of the powers of the youth court. Pursuant to section 59(1) of the Sentencing Act 2020, any judge was required to follow a relevant guideline, which in the claimant’s case was the Sentencing Children and Young People Guideline, paragraph 6 (in particular paragraph 6.3) being relevant to the crossing of a significant age threshold between commission of an offence and sentence. While the guideline acknowledged that a person convicted at the age of 18 would be subject to the purposes of sentencing applicable to adults, it stressed the relevance of the age of the offender on the date of the offence. In the event of conviction, any custodial sentence would be of a type appropriate to someone aged 18 or over but the length of sentence would be largely dictated by his age at the time of the offence. The judge had considered both the children’s and adult guidelines. He had rightly concluded that on the information available to him, including that there were no complex issues of fact or law, the case fell into Category 3B in the adult guideline (four–seven years’ custody) but, taking into account the approach to sentencing young people mandated by the children guideline, the judge could not decide that there was a real prospect of a sentence in excess of two years’ detention. His approach had been entirely appropriate and thus it could not properly be said that he had been wrong in his decision to retain jurisdiction (paras 27, 31, 32, 36, 37).