Robbery, Burglary and Related Theft Offences — SQE1 FLK2 Criminal Liability

A man steals a bicycle left unlocked outside a shop and rides it home. He keeps it in his shed and uses it. Three days later the owner spots him riding it through the town centre, steps into the road and takes hold of the handlebars. The man shoves him hard in the chest, so that he stumbles into the kerb, and rides away.

Robbery? No. Theft, and an assault, but not robbery, and the reason is timing. Force has to be used immediately before or at the time of stealing. Three days later, with the bicycle in his shed, the stealing was long over. This is Robbery, Burglary and Related Theft Offences, the seventh topic in Criminal Liability. Keep that bicycle in mind.

Here is the route. Robbery first, and the four things the prosecution has to prove. Then the timing rule, which is narrower than it looks and wider than students expect. Then burglary, in its two forms, and what counts as entering a building as a trespasser. And last, two offences that travel with them: taking a vehicle, and handling what somebody else has stolen.

Start with the section. A person is guilty of robbery if he steals and, immediately before or at the time of doing so, and in order to do so, uses force on any person. Or puts or seeks to put any person in fear of being then and there subjected to force. That is s.8 of the Theft Act 1968. Theft, plus force. It is indictable-only, and the maximum is life imprisonment.

Four things to prove, and they are worth running in order. A completed theft. Force, or the threat of force, on a person. Force used immediately before or at the time of the stealing. And force used in order to steal. Lose any one of the four and you are looking at theft, or assault, or both, but not robbery.

How much force? Remarkably little. Nudging a victim off balance so that a wallet can be taken from him is enough. Force is an ordinary English word, and whether it was used is a question for the jury rather than a matter of degree fixed by law. That is R v Dawson and James.

Try one. A woman walks out of a supermarket carrying a wheeled shopping bag by its handle. A man takes hold of the handle behind her. She keeps her grip, and he pulls hard two or three times until her fingers are forced open and she stumbles against a trolley bay. He never touches her body. Robbery, or theft?

Robbery. Force does not have to be applied to the victim's body. Where the defendant wrenched a shopping basket out of a victim's hand, the Court of Appeal held that was force used on the person. It overcame her physical resistance through the thing she was holding. R v Clouden. Contrast a purse lifted deftly from a pocket, or a bag taken from a table: no resistance overcome, no force, no robbery.

The threat limb is the alternative. You do not have to use force at all if you put someone in fear of it, but the fear must be of force then and there. Give me your phone or I will hurt you is a robbery. Pay me next week or I will hurt you is not, because the force threatened is not immediate.

Now timing, and this is where our bicycle comes back. The words look narrow. Immediately before, or at the time of, stealing. Force used after the theft is complete is not robbery. But the courts read appropriation as a continuing act rather than an instant, and that opens the section up considerably.

In R v Hale, one defendant went upstairs for a jewellery box while the other tied up the householder below. The Court of Appeal held the jury could find the appropriation was still continuing when the force was used. That is robbery. R v Lockley applied the same reasoning to force used against a shopkeeper while the defendant was making off with cans of beer. Also robbery.

So the limit is one of fact and degree. A defendant who is still on the job cannot say the theft finished the moment he first touched the goods. But three days later, with the bicycle in his shed and the owner grabbing the handlebars in the street, the theft is long spent. The shove is an assault. It is not force used in order to steal.

Which is the fourth element. In order to. The force must be for the purpose of stealing. Push a shopper aside to reach a display cabinet and that is force in order to steal. Get into a fight for reasons of your own, and then spot an opportunity in the commotion, and the force was not used in order to steal at all.

Burglary next, and s.9 creates two of them. Under s.9(1)(a), you enter a building, or part of a building, as a trespasser, with intent to steal, to inflict grievous bodily harm, or to do unlawful damage. Under s.9(1)(b), having entered as a trespasser, you steal or attempt to steal, or inflict or attempt to inflict grievous bodily harm.

Three differences, and the exam lives on the first. When does the intent arise? Before or at entry for the first limb, after entry for the second. Do you have to carry it out? The first limb needs intent alone; the second needs the offence, or an attempt at it. And damage. Intent to damage is in the first limb. It is not in the second at all.

Hold on to a man who walks past a house and finds the front door open. He comes back at the quick check.

Building, then. It is read broadly. Section 9(4) extends it to inhabited vehicles or vessels, so a houseboat or a caravan somebody lives in counts. And it counts whether or not the occupier is there at the time. Tents and temporary structures can qualify. Open land, gardens and outbuildings that are not attached to a dwelling may not.

And part of a building matters as much as the building itself. Test it. A tradesman is invited into a homeowner's living room to fix a leak and told to wait there. While the homeowner is upstairs on the phone, he goes into the bedroom, opens a jewellery box and takes a gold watch and several rings. Burglary?

Yes. He had permission for the living room. He had none for the bedroom, so he entered that part of the building as a trespasser, and he then stole in it. That is s.9(1)(b). Permission to be in one part of a building does not stretch to all of it.

Then entry, which is not defined in the Act. Try this one. A man breaks a ground-floor window at the back of a house at night, meaning to steal. He pushes his head and one arm through, his coat catches on the frame, and he is held fast, unable to move further in or to reach anything. The police find him still stuck there. Has he entered?

He has. The early formulation demanded an effective and substantial entry. The courts dropped substantial, so leaning through a broken shop window with head and arms inside was enough. And R v Ryan went further still: a defendant found in the early hours stuck in a window, head and one arm inside, freed by the fire brigade, had entered. It was irrelevant that he could not possibly have reached what he meant to take.

So the practical test is simple. Has any part of the defendant's body crossed into the building? A hand, an arm, a head is enough. Do not look for a substantial entry, and do not be drawn by the argument that the intended theft was impossible. That is exactly the argument Ryan rejected.

Trespasser is the element people get wrong. It does not just mean breaking in. A son had a general permission to come and go at his father's house. He went in and took two television sets. The Court of Appeal held he entered as a trespasser. You enter as a trespasser if you enter in excess of the permission given to you, knowing that you are doing so or being reckless as to it. That is R v Jones and Smith.

Permission to enter for one purpose is not permission to enter for a wholly different one. Which explains the shop. A shop invites the public in to browse and to buy. It does not invite them in to steal. So a customer who walks through the door with a pre-formed intention to steal enters in excess of that implied licence. He is a trespasser from the moment of entry, even though the shop is open to everyone.

And there is a mental element to the trespass itself. For both limbs, the defendant must know he is entering as a trespasser, or be reckless as to whether he is. A defendant who genuinely believes he has permission to be there is not a trespasser at all.

Sentencing, and there is a neat point here. Section 9(3) fixes the maximum by reference to the building, not by reference to which limb was charged or to what the defendant intended. Fourteen years where the offence was committed in respect of a building, or part of a building, which is a dwelling. Ten years in any other case. So the same conduct in a house and in a warehouse carries different maxima.

And domestic burglary carries a minimum as well. Under s.314 of the Sentencing Act 2020, a defendant convicted of a third domestic burglary faces a mandatory minimum of three years' imprisonment. Unless the court considers that would be unjust in all the circumstances.

Two more offences travel with these. First, taking a vehicle. Under s.12 it is an offence to take a mechanically propelled vehicle without the consent of the owner or of the person in lawful possession. There is no need to intend to deprive the owner permanently, and that is precisely what separates it from theft. Joyriding is s.12. The maximum is six months.

Section 12A aggravates it. It applies where it is proved that, after the vehicle was taken and before it was recovered, one of several things happened. It was driven dangerously. An accident occurred causing injury or damage to property. Or the vehicle itself was damaged or set on fire. The maximum for the aggravated offence is two years.

Second, handling. Under s.22, a person handles stolen goods if he acts otherwise than in the course of the stealing, knowing or believing them to be stolen. He receives them, or arranges to receive them. Or he assists in their retention, removal, disposal or realisation by or for the benefit of another, or arranges to do so. The maximum is fourteen years.

The mens rea is where the marks are. Knowing or believing. Belief falls short of knowledge, but it goes a long way beyond suspicion. The classic formulation has the defendant saying to himself that he cannot say he knows for certain the goods are stolen. But that there can be no other reasonable conclusion in all the circumstances.

Anything less than that is suspicion, and suspicion will not do. Nor will turning a blind eye. Suspicion coupled with a deliberate refusal to make enquiries is evidence from which a jury may infer belief. It is not itself belief, and a direction that treats the two as the same thing is a misdirection.

One last rule that catches people out. You cannot handle your own stolen goods. The goods must have been stolen by somebody else, and for the same defendant and the same goods the two offences are mutually exclusive. The thief is charged with theft. The person who takes the goods off his hands afterwards is charged with handling.

A word on how SQE1 tests this. You will not be asked to recall a case name or a subsection number. You get a scenario, five answers, and one instruction. Pick the best. So learn the elements and run them in order. The names here are memory pegs, nothing more.

If you keep only three, keep these. R v Hale, where appropriation is a continuing act, so force used while the theft is still running is robbery. R v Jones and Smith, where a son with a key to his father's house still entered as a trespasser. And s.9(3), which sets the maximum by the building and not by what the defendant meant to do.

Four traps. One: timing. At the moment the force was used, was the theft still happening? If the defendant has got away and uses force later to avoid being caught, that is not robbery. If he is still on the job, it is.

Two: the force must reach a person. Prying open a window is force, but it is force on property, and it is not robbery. There has to be a connection between the force and a person, by contact, through something they are gripping, or by a threat.

Three: read the burglary facts for when the intent arose, not for what was taken. Entered already planning to steal is the first limb. Entered for some other reason and decided once inside is the second. And remember that intent to do damage appears in the first limb only.

Four: do not look for a substantial entry, and do not accept that an impossible theft means no entry. Any part of the body across the threshold will do, even if the defendant is stuck fast.

Quick check, and here is that man again. He walks past a house and sees the front door left open after a delivery. He is desperate for a lavatory, goes inside to use one, and has no thought of taking anything. Nobody challenges him. On his way out he sees a watch lying on a hall table, decides on the spot that he will have it, and puts it in his pocket. On what basis, if any, is he guilty of burglary?

Three answers. One: under s.9(1)(a), because he entered as a trespasser and stole property inside. Two: not guilty, because he had no intention of stealing when he entered. Three: under s.9(1)(b), because, having entered as a trespasser, he stole something in the building. Pause here if you want a moment.

The answer is three. Section 9(1)(b) asks only what the defendant did after entering. He entered as a trespasser, because he had no permission to be in the house at all, and he then stole the watch inside. That the intention to steal arrived only on his way out is no answer to that limb.

Why the other two fail. Option one fixes on the wrong moment. Section 9(1)(a) looks at the intention at entry, and he came in meaning only to use the lavatory. Option two treats that as the end of the matter, when it kills only the first limb. And an open door is not an invitation.

Five things to take away. One: robbery is theft plus force on a person, used immediately before or at the time of the stealing, and in order to steal. Two: appropriation is a continuing act, so force used while the theft is still running is robbery, and force used days later is not.

Three: for burglary, find the moment the intent arose. Before entry is s.9(1)(a), after entry is s.9(1)(b), and damage belongs to the first limb only. Four: entry means any part of the body inside, and you trespass whenever you go in beyond your permission.

Five: taking a vehicle needs no intention to deprive permanently, and handling needs knowledge or belief, a long way past suspicion. And our bicycle thief? A thief who committed an assault three days later, and the Crown must charge it that way. Next time, Fraud.

Practise this topic with exam-style questions at sqe1prep.co.uk. This episode is for education and exam revision only, not legal advice, and we are not affiliated with or endorsed by the SRA or Kaplan.