Held, appeal allowed. Where a claim of exceptional circumstances related in whole or in part to the impact for the particular offender of being in custody or in custody for as long as the statutory minimum required, the court would usually have to identify the sentence that would be imposed if the statutory minimum did not apply. That was a key factor in assessing whether the imposition of the statutory minimum would be arbitrary and disproportionate and involved considering the impact of putative exceptional circumstances on sentence if treated as matters of personal mitigation in a case where the court was free to sentence below the statutory minimum. Under table 2, culpability A of the Sentencing Council, Firearms, Possession of prohibited weapon Sentencing Guideline to which regard may be had if exceptional circumstances were found the guideline range was one to three years’ custody for category 2 harm. The principles by which a sentencing court judged whether there were exceptional circumstances were set out in the Guideline and reference to case law pre-dating the Guideline to identify those principles was misplaced and discouraged. The culpability A category ranges in table 2 of the Guideline may assist in identifying an appropriate sentence where exceptional circumstances were found and the statutory minimum sentence did not apply but the table was designed to apply to possession cases that were less serious by nature than those to which Parliament had attached the minimum sentence regime. The guidance at paragraph 14 of step 3 was only that the sentencing court might find table 2 culpability A sentence ranges useful, not that they became applicable. The necessarily bespoke nature of the individual features of a case where exceptional circumstances were found tended to make such cases unsuited to the now common process of categorisation so as to sentence within a normal range sentencing range tabulated in a guideline. When the defendant’s pregnancy and its consequences and risks for her and her unborn baby were added to the other personal mitigation available to her there were exceptional circumstances relating to her and her particular offence that, taken together, rendered it unjust to impose a custodial term of at least five years. The experience of custody was going to be and was traumatic and dangerous for the defendant beyond any kind of norm and by the date of the appeal hearing she had served the equivalent of a 14-month sentence but the weight of punishment was the equivalent of a much stiffer sentence. There were impeccable prospects of rehabilitation and the interests of the defendant’s unborn child were a weighty factor if a sufficient custodial term unconstrained by the statutory minimum would be two years or shorter. It was in those circumstances and on balance that it was in the interests of justice to take that very exceptional course of suspending the defendant’s sentence for an offence of possessing a prohibited firearm. The sentence of five years would be quashed and a sentence of two years’ imprisonment suspended for two years substituted (paras 5–6, 11, 13, 17, 41, 47–49).

Per curiam. The use by criminals of intimate friends or family members of good character to hold illegal weapons to avoid the weapons being found by the police especially the abuse of naïve, easily led or overly trusting custodians is a repugnant but frequent feature in firearms possession cases which does not, without more, constitute an exceptional circumstance (para 12).