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A Crown Court sentence can be reopened after it has been passed, and increased. The unduly lenient sentence scheme allows the Attorney General to refer certain sentences to the Court of Appeal, and in 2026 the window for doing so got longer. That change arrived in the Victims and Courts Act 2026, which received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026 and which, despite coverage treating it as live, is mostly still not in force. This is a plain-English account of how the scheme works, what the Act actually changed and from when, and what it means for someone who has been sentenced and assumes the matter is closed.
The stage of the case decides the word. Before a charge, a person is a suspect. After a charge, a defendant. After conviction and sentence, on an appeal or a reference, an appellant or a respondent. This piece is unusual for us in that it deals mainly with what happens after sentence, so the later words are used deliberately here rather than loosely. Most of our work sits at the earlier end, which is where outcomes are cheapest to change.
The Act is about the experience of victims in the criminal justice system, the functions of the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses, and the administration of criminal justice. It runs to 19 sections and two schedules, and it amends a long list of existing statutes, including the Criminal Justice Act 1988, the Sentencing Code, the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 and the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004.
Its best-known measures are the power to compel an offender to attend a sentencing hearing, restrictions on the parental responsibility of certain sex offenders, and a reform of agreements that prevent victims from speaking about criminal conduct. None of those three are yet in force.
Section 18 of the Act sets the commencement scheme, and it works in three layers.
Section 18(3) brought sections 16, 17, 18 and 19 into force on the day the Act was passed. These are the power to make consequential provision, the extent provision, the commencement provision itself, and the short title. Nothing there changes how a case is investigated, prosecuted or sentenced. They are the machinery that allows the rest of the Act to be switched on later.
Section 18(2) commenced a defined list at the end of two months beginning with the day the Act was passed:
Note the precision of the reference to section 13. Parliament commenced parts of it, not all of it, and the distinction is easy to miss.
The Victims and Courts Act 2026 (Commencement No. 1) Regulations 2026 were made on 12 August 2026 and came into force on 13 August 2026. They commenced section 7 and a set of paragraphs in Schedule 2, and only so far as, and only for the purposes, specified in the regulations themselves. The practical effect is narrow. It enables provisions inserted into the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004 under which probation service providers may disclose certain information to victims where withholding it would risk physical or psychological harm.
This is the commencement that most commentary has missed, and it illustrates the general point. A commencement order can bring a section into force for one purpose and leave the rest of it dormant.
Everything else awaits regulations under section 18(1). That includes the compelled-attendance power, the armed forces equivalent, the restrictions on parental responsibility, the confidentiality-clause reform, and the new powers and duties attaching to the Victims’ Commissioner.
Under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, the Attorney General may refer a sentence to the Court of Appeal, with that court’s leave, where the sentence appears unduly lenient. It applies to specified offences rather than to every case, and it is usually shortened to the ULS scheme.
Anyone can ask the Attorney General’s Office for a sentence review. That includes a victim, a family member, a journalist, and members of the public with no connection to the case at all. No standing is required, no fee is payable, and a request can be made online. If leave is given and the reference succeeds, the Court of Appeal can quash the sentence imposed and pass the sentence it thinks appropriate, which in practice means a higher one.
The control on all of this has been time. Notice of an application for leave had to be given within 28 days of sentence, and that period has operated as a fixed outer edge. Once it passed, the sentence stood.
The threshold is high, and it is not the same as a sentence being lenient. A sentence is unduly lenient where it falls outside the range of sentences that the judge, having regard to all the relevant factors, could reasonably consider appropriate. A sentence at the bottom of the range is not unduly lenient. A sentence that somebody disagrees with is not unduly lenient.
The scheme exists to correct gross errors, not to re-run the sentencing process or to substitute one reasonable view for another. Where a judge has applied the guidelines, given reasons, and arrived at a figure the guidelines produce, the fact that a different judge might have imposed more is not the test.
That distinction matters to anyone waiting out a referral window. The question is not whether the sentence imposed was generous. It is whether it fell outside the range altogether.
The ULS scheme does not reach every case. It applies to sentences imposed in the Crown Court in England and Wales, for offences within its scope: the indictable-only offences, such as murder and rape, together with a list of either-way offences brought in by order, which has been extended repeatedly and now includes a range of sexual offences and certain terrorism offences.
Two consequences follow, and both are frequently missed. A sentence imposed in the magistrates’ court is outside the scheme altogether. So is a Crown Court sentence for an either-way offence that has never been specified, however strongly anyone feels about it.
Northern Ireland operates its own scheme, and the changes described in this article do not extend to it.
A reference is not a prosecution appeal as of right. The Attorney General’s Office must first seek the leave of the Court of Appeal, and the court can refuse it.
Where leave is given, the court hears the reference on its merits. It can decide the sentence was not unduly lenient and leave it alone. It can agree the sentence was lenient while holding that it was not unduly so. Or it can find the sentence unduly lenient, quash it, and pass a different one.
Even at that last stage the court retains a discretion. It is not obliged to increase a sentence it has found to be unduly lenient, and in deciding what to do, it takes into account that the offender has already been sentenced once and has been waiting on the outcome since.
Section 13 amends Schedule 3 to the 1988 Act. The part now in force addresses late requests. Where the Attorney General receives a sentence review request during the final 14 days of the 28-day period, notice may be given within 14 days beginning with the day on which the request was received. A certificate of the date of receipt is conclusive evidence of it.
The arithmetic is the point. A request landing on day 27 can carry the effective deadline to day 41. The 28-day figure is still the headline, and it is no longer the outer edge.
Section 13 also provides for the Court of Appeal to permit notice out of time where the person asking is a qualifying victim, where notice is given within six months of the sentence, and where the court considers it in the interests of justice. That paragraph is not included in the list of provisions commenced by section 18(2), and the August commencement regulations do not mention section 13 at all. On the face of the commencement provision, the six-month route is not yet available.
It is coming. When it is switched on, a sentence passed today could in principle be referred half a year later, and the practical finality of a Crown Court sentence for specified offences changes shape.
The Attorney General’s Office publishes the outcome of sentence review referrals, so this is a matter of public record rather than guesswork. Anyone tracking a referral window in England and Wales can see what has actually been referred and what the Court of Appeal did with it.
The structural point worth taking from it is that there are two filters, not one, and the outcome of each is recorded. The first sits with the Attorney General, who determines whether a request from a member of the public becomes a reference at all. The second is the Court of Appeal, which decides whether to grant leave and then rules on the merits. A request is not a referral, and a referral is not an increase.
Section 14 belongs in the same picture. It requires the victims’ code to make provision about informing victims of the opportunity to ask the Attorney General’s Office for a sentence review. That duty is in force. More victims will be told the route exists, so more sentence review requests will reach the Attorney General, and more sentences will be looked at.
The consequence for anyone who has just been sentenced is straightforward. The point at which a sentence can be treated as settled has moved, and it will move further. Where a sentence in a specified-offence case attracted press attention or a strong reaction from a complainant, the assumption that day 29 brings safety is no longer reliable, and advice given on that assumption is out of date.
Section 1 inserts a new chapter into Part 3 of the Sentencing Code, allowing the Crown Court to order a detained offender to attend their sentencing hearing where they have refused, or are suspected of intending to refuse. Failure to comply without reasonable excuse is a criminal contempt, reasonable force may be ordered to produce the person, and a prison sanctions order is available, with the available sanctions and maximum periods to be prescribed by regulations and capped at the prison-rules equivalent.
This provision generated most of the coverage the Act received. It is not in force, no regulations prescribing the sanctions have been made, and a court cannot presently make such an order. Anyone being advised that this power applies to a sentencing hearing listed now is being advised wrongly.
Section 6 replaces section 17 of the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024. It makes void any provision in an agreement so far as it purports to prevent a victim from making an allegation of, or a disclosure of information relating to, relevant criminal conduct, or relating to how another party to the agreement responded to it. Regulations may create excepted categories, and there are carve-outs for certain Crown agreements.
For our client base this is the most significant provision in the Act, and it is the one least written about. Settlement agreements, exit agreements and confidentiality clauses are routine in the sectors our clients work in, and a clause drafted on the current law may not survive commencement in the form it was written. Anyone in a regulated profession facing a parallel allegation should treat this as a change to plan for rather than a change to react to. It is not in force yet, which is precisely why now is the time to look at it.
This Act is the third in a short run where the gap between passage and effect has driven the advice. The Sentencing Act 2026 commenced in stages. The Crime and Policing Act 2026 did the same, which is why we published separate pieces on the police powers now in force and the ones that are not and on corporate criminal liability under that Act.
“The Act is in force” is almost always the wrong question. The right questions are which section, from what date, for what purpose, and whether it applies to conduct or to a sentence that predates commencement. Section 13 of this Act shows why. A single section is in force in part, with one lettered paragraph left out of the commencement list, and the difference between those two paragraphs is the difference between a 42-day exposure and a six-month one.
We act for individuals across England and Wales, and the work that changes outcomes most is done early. Our pre-charge representation practice exists because representations made before a charging decision can end a matter before it acquires momentum, and where they succeed the outcome is a no further action decision rather than an acquittal years later.
Where someone has already been charged, the proactive work is not over. The same analysis can be put to the prosecution as the basis for a review of the charging decision, and in the right circumstances a case can be discontinued rather than won at trial.
Where a sentence has been passed in a specified-offence case, the practical steps are to establish the exact date of sentence, to identify whether the offence is one to which the referral scheme applies, and to track the referral window on the current law rather than on the 28-day figure everyone remembers. This forms part of our wider criminal defence work.
We do not wait to see what happens next. On a statute that is only partly in force, the value is in knowing exactly which part.
We offer confidential consultations, in person at our London offices or remotely by secure call. Initial enquiries are handled discreetly and quickly.
If a sentence has recently been passed, or an investigation is live and no charging decision has been taken, the timing of advice matters more than almost anything else about it. Speak to our team today.
Only in part. Sections 16 to 19 commenced on Royal Assent, 29 April 2026. Sections 11, 12, 14, 15 and part of section 13 commenced on 29 June 2026. Section 7 and parts of Schedule 2 commenced on 13 August 2026 for specified purposes. The remainder awaits commencement regulations.
Yes, for specified offences. Under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 the Attorney General may refer a sentence that appears unduly lenient to the Court of Appeal, which can quash it and impose a different sentence, including a longer one.
The baseline remains 28 days from the date of sentence. Where the Attorney General receives a sentence review request in the last 14 days of that period, notice may now be given within 14 days of receiving the request, which can carry the deadline beyond day 28.
The provision allowing the Court of Appeal to permit notice within six months where the applicant is a qualifying victim is not among those commenced by section 18(2), and the first commencement regulations do not mention section 13. On the current commencement position it is not yet available.
Not yet under this Act. Section 1 creates that power and inserts it into the Sentencing Code, and it has not been commenced. No regulations prescribing the available sanctions have been made.
Not yet. Section 6 will make such provisions void so far as they prevent a victim from disclosing relevant criminal conduct, subject to excepted agreements and Crown carve-outs. It is not in force. Agreements should be reviewed on the basis that it will be.
Establish the exact date of sentence, whether the offence falls within the referral scheme, and how the current time limits apply to it. Advice given on a flat 28-day assumption is now incomplete. You can contact our team directly for a confidential discussion.
Lex Vindico Group is regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. We represent individuals nationally across England and Wales in criminal, regulatory, and parallel-proceedings defence at every stage, and most decisively, at the pre-charge stage.
This article is written by Akram Mula, LLM, Solicitor Advocate and CPS-approved Prosecutor, founder of Lex Vindico Group. It is general legal information about a recently enacted statute and its commencement position, not legal advice on any specific case. For advice on your specific circumstances, contact our team directly.
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