Sentencing Council website redesign – preview
From 18 August 2025, the Sentencing Council website will have a new look. On this page you can see what the magistrates’ court and Crown Court areas of the site will look like and get a preview of the new-look pages and sentencing tools.
Magistrates’ court sentencing guidelines search
Crown Court sentencing guidelines search
Sentencing guidelines – printing and bookmarking for offline use
Magistrates’ court tools and where to find them
Moving on from the iPad app
Magistrates’ court sentencing guidelines search
The magistrates’ court guideline search function will work exactly as the existing search works. You will still be able to find offence specific guidelines by entering the name of the offence or by using words or phrases related to the offence, the name of the Act or section or the CJS offence code.
We are retaining the all offence types drop-down so you will still be able to locate guidelines by offence type.
Crown Court sentencing guidelines search
The Crown Court guideline search function will work exactly as the existing search works. You will still be able to find offence specific guidelines by entering the name of the offence or by using words or phrases related to the offence or the name of the Act or section.
We are retaining the all offence types drop-down so you will still be able to locate guidelines by offence type.
Sentencing guidelines – printing and bookmarking for offline use
You will still be able to print a guideline or create a pdf by selecting the printer icon in the top right-hand corner of each guideline. There will also be a new icon that will allow you to bookmark guidelines.
Bookmarked guidelines can be viewed both online and offline. You will be able to bookmark up to 50 guidelines at a time and reach them with one click from the homepage. Once you have saved the link to your bookmark page, all your bookmarked guidelines will be available offline so you can prepare in advance for whenever you might not have internet.
Magistrates’ Court tools and where to find them
The magistrates’ courts sentencing tools have been improved and will now have better functionality. While they will look a little different, they will operate in the same way. You will be able to find the tools in the right-hand list of “Related content” in every guideline or by selecting “Tools” on the top of each website page.
Fine calculator
Drink-driving calculator
Pronouncement builder
Moving on from the iPad app
The new-look website has been designed specifically for use on iPads, other tablets and mobile phones, and the Council will be decommissioning the existing iPad app. For magistrates who are used to working on the app, the guidelines, tools and other related pages will look different, but you will still be able to access them all using the browser on your iPad and, with the exception of highlighting, you will be able to do everything on the web-based version that you can currently do on the app.
You will also still be able to work with sentencing guidelines when you are offline by using the bookmarking function so you can prepare in advance for whenever you might not have internet.
Replacing the app with a responsive website means that the full functionality of the website will now be available to users of different tablets as well as iPads, and we can be sure that everyone using the website will be seeing identical, up-to-date content at the same time.
The magistrates’ courts sentencing tools will look different on the new website but will operate in the same way. You can find the tools in the right-hand list of “Related content” in every guideline or by selecting “Tools” on the top of each website page.