R v Gavin Lawson

On 28 August 2025, in the Crown Court at Shrewsbury, after a jury trial, the appellant was convicted of one offence of burglary and sentenced to a term of 42 months' imprisonment. With the leave of the single judge, the appellant appeals against that sentence as being manifestly excessive.

On the morning of 4 July 2023, the appellant and another male burgled the One Stop shop on Gravel Hill, Ludlow. The shop opened at 6.00 am and two members of staff, Ms Freeman and a female colleague, were getting ready to open. Ms Freeman had the back door open and was using a trolley to move some newspapers across the car park and into the shop; as she walked through the back door she felt her right shoulder being grabbed and she was pushed inside by a man who told her to get inside and do what she was told; a second male was behind him. Ms Freeman was ushered into the stockroom by the men, and they made her colleague open the safe so that they could steal money from it. One of the men also made Ms Freeman's colleague take him to the till in front of the shop, taking the money out of the till and tobacco products from behind it while the other stayed with Ms Freeman. When told that the women could not unlock the CCTV monitor, one of the men then ripped it out and threw it across the stockroom. The men loaded the money and products they had taken into rucksacks and left through the back door. Both men were wearing balaclavas and dark clothing with yellow high viz jackets. They had arrived at the shop in a black Peugeot in which they then left.

The car used for the burglary was located on ANPR showing a different number plate (the plate used on the car at the time of the burglary was false). Police checks revealed that the Peugeot was registered as a fleet vehicle to NHS England and was owned by a business that supplied fleet vehicles and worked in partnership with another company which used agency workers to collect and deliver vehicles; the appellant was an agency worker for the latter company. On 3 July 2023, the appellant had been tasked with delivering the Peugeot from Lancashire to Peterborough the next day and had the vehicle between 5.21 pm on 3 July and 11.40 am on 4 July 2023, covering the time it was used in the burglary.

Further ANPR checks identified a second vehicle on false plates (a blue Vauxhall) at the One Stop shop on the morning of 27 June 2023. On 26 June 2023 the appellant had been tasked with delivering the blue Vauxhall from Kingston upon Thames to Leicestershire on 30 June 2023, so he had the vehicle between those dates. The Vauxhall was apparently in the vicinity of the One Stop shop on 27 June because that had been reconnaissance prior to the burglary. Cell site data also revealed that devices attributed to the appellant were near to the One Stop shop on Gravel Hill at the time of the burglary on 4 July and on the morning of 27 June 2023.

The appellant was aged 40 at sentence. He had 15 convictions for 28 offences spanning from 1999 to 2016. His earlier offences included common assault, possessing an offensive weapon, two offences of robbery for which he received a detention and training order in 2001, one offence of robbery for which he was sentenced to three years in a young offenders’ institution in 2003, plus offences of section 47 actual bodily harm, affray, driving offences, breach of court orders and possessing Class A drugs; in 2009, the appellant was sentenced to three years' imprisonment for two offences of possessing Class A with intent and driving offences; in March 2012 he was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment for handling stolen goods; in April 2012 he was sentenced to four years' imprisonment for blackmail. The appellant's most recent offence was in 2016, for being drunk and disorderly and failing to comply with a section 35 direction excluding a person from an area for which he was fined.

In sentencing the appellant, the judge considered this was a case of high culpability, category 1 harm, giving a starting point of two years and a range of one to five years. The judge viewed the appellant as having been "for a significant period a criminal offender", taking into account his previous convictions for robbery and blackmail, together with other less serious offences as aggravating features of his offending. Acknowledging the submission that the appellant had appeared to be moving away from offending, the judge nevertheless found that "…you have gone back to the old ways because this is a serious offence involving significant planning and significant fear to the two ladies in that shop".

The judge had regard to the appellant's personal mitigation but ultimately concluded that the seriousness of the offence was “…significantly aggravated, in particular, by your previous convictions and... the extent of the planning and the extent of the impact upon those in the shop such that the starting point must be elevated"; allowing for some reduction for mitigation, the sentence passed was of 42 months (three and a half years), with a reduction of 390 days spent on qualifying curfew.

For completeness, we note that the judge did not adjourn for a pre-sentence report in this case. It is not suggested that this gave rise to any error, and we would agree that such a report was unnecessary in this instance: the appellant was represented by trial counsel, who was well placed to bring all relevant matters to the court's attention; the judge had presided over the trial and was fully acquainted with the facts; a custodial sentence was inevitable.

Contending that the sentence imposed was manifestly excessive, the appellant had originally advanced his appeal on two bases: (i) the offending was put in too high a category, and (ii) the judge erred in elevating the sentence by 18 months because of the appellant's previous convictions.

In his admirably concise oral submissions, Mr Sandhu did not seek to advance the first point of complaint but did pursue the second objection that the 18-month uplift, because of the appellant's previous convictions, was unwarranted.

This was a non-domestic burglary for which the appellant had engaged in a significant degree of planning, clearly placing his culpability within category A under the guideline. Although the appellant previously sought to resist the categorisation of harm, this was a case where the two female shop workers were on the premises throughout and there was evidence, in Ms Freeman's statement of substantial emotional impact. The judge had presided over the trial and was best placed to assess the seriousness of this offending and we do not consider there was any error in the approach to the categorisation of the offence. We think Mr Sandhu was correct in not seeking to advance that criticism before us.

The second point raised by this appeal takes issue with the uplift given to the appellant's previous convictions as an aggravating feature of the offence. Although the appellant had an extensive criminal record, it is emphasised that the majority of his offending had taken place many years before, and, other than a drunken disorderly offence along with a failure to comply with an exclusion direction in 2016, he had managed to maintain a clean record since his convictions (and respective sentences) in 2012. The appellant argues that, even if this past record might legitimately be taken into account as an aggravating feature of the offence, this could not justify an uplift in his sentence of some 18 months from the guideline starting point.

The difficulty with this submission is that the judge permissibly took the view that the present offending demonstrated a lapse back into the appellant's former criminal life-style. Given the high degree of quite sophisticated planning involved in this burglary, the judge was entitled to take the view that the appellant's earlier criminal conduct will have informed his approach to this offending and thus amounted to an aggravating factor.

Standing back, we have reflected on the three and a half year term imposed in the light of all the circumstances of this offence. Those circumstances included the significant planning and degree of sophistication involved; the breach of trust arising from the appellant's use of cars entrusted to him in his employment; the fact that two men were involved, who, wearing balaclavas and using a degree of force, plainly terrified the two women who were, by themselves, working in the shop that morning. Having regard to all those factors we would place this offending towards the upper end of the category 1A range. Moreover, notwithstanding the passage of time, the appellant's past offending was relevant given the high degree of planning – demonstrating a degree of criminal knowhow – that went into this offence.

For the reasons we have explained we do not consider the judge erred in his approach to this sentence, and we do not find that the custodial term of three and a half years (still well within the category range) was manifestly excessive. We therefore dismiss this appeal.