The Ministry of Justice has laid new sentencing regulations that will bring a limited pilot into force on 5 October 2026. Made under section 395A of the Sentencing Act 2020, the instrument was signed on 7 September 2026 and laid before Parliament on 9 September 2026. It sets the conditions under which community orders and suspended sentence orders can qualify for special procedures in England and Wales.\n\nIn practical terms, the Regulations do not change the basic availability of those sentences across the system as a whole. Instead, they create a tightly defined route under which a small group of cases can be managed with added court review powers during a fixed pilot period.
The Explanatory Note says the special procedures give courts a more active role after sentence. Once a qualifying order is in place, review hearings can be required, probation services must prepare progress reports for those hearings, and the court may amend certain conditions after considering the report and the outcome of the review discussion.\n\nThe same note also sets out an incentives and sanctions model. Positive progress may be recognised by reducing the frequency of review hearings or by changing other parts of the order, while breaches can be addressed through a breach hearing and, in some cases, committal to custody for up to 28 days on no more than three occasions during the life of the order.
The pilot is time-limited. Under regulation 3, a proposed order will qualify only if it is made within the period beginning on 5 October 2026 and ending on 5 April 2028. That gives courts an 18-month window in which new qualifying cases can enter the scheme.\n\nGeography is also tightly controlled. Regulation 4 limits qualifying cases to Leeds Magistrates' Court, Liverpool Magistrates' Court, North Tyneside Magistrates' Court and South Tyneside Magistrates' Court. The instrument extends to England and Wales as a matter of law, but the pilot itself is confined to those four courts.
Eligibility is narrow by design. Regulation 5 limits the scheme to adults aged 18 or over at the date of conviction who are female and who are not relevant offenders within the meaning of section 80(2) of the Sexual Offences Act 2003.\n\nThat means the female-only design is not a policy assumption sitting outside the legal text; it is part of the statutory test for entry. The Explanatory Note states that a specific need for a female-only pilot has been identified and that an equality statement has been published alongside the Explanatory Memorandum.
The offence filters are equally important. As a starting point, the Regulations exclude cases involving specified offensive weapons offences, firearms offences, several knife and bladed article offences, offences under section 6 of the Offensive Weapons Act 2019, and offences listed in Schedule 3 to the Sexual Offences Act 2003.\n\nThere is, however, a defined exception for some first-time possession cases. Where the offence is possession under section 1 of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 or section 139 or 139A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, the fourth condition can still be met if the person has no earlier conviction for the listed weapons offences. In those cases, the court retains discretion on suitability for the pilot.
For practitioners, the main operational point is that any qualifying order will come with closer judicial monitoring than a standard community order or suspended sentence order. Defence representatives, probation staff and sentencers will need to consider not only whether the statutory criteria are met, but also whether the case is suitable for a review-based model that can tighten or relax conditions in response to progress.\n\nThe instrument is also explicit about expected system impact. The Explanatory Note says no full impact assessment has been produced because no, or no significant, impact on the private, voluntary or public sector is foreseen. Even so, the pilot will be watched closely because it tests how regular court review, probation reporting and limited custody powers operate within community-based sentencing.