Schedules Schedule 2: Sentencing Consolidation: Pre-Consolidation Amendments Category (f): when sentences take effect
Another category of pre-consolidation amendments are those in category (f): amendments desirable in ensuring consistency in relation to the powers of different courts to provide for when sentences or particular requirements of sentences are to take effect. A specific power has been taken in section 2(3)(c) for the Secretary of State to remove differences between provisions relating to powers of different courts to provide for when sentences or particular requirements of sentences are to take effect. The amendments made can broadly be sub-categorised into two types.
	The first type of amendments are those affecting when a sentence starts and when a sentence ends.
	The most significant of these amendments is the amendment to section 154 of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000 by paragraph 51. Section 154 provides that any sentence imposed by a Crown Court takes effect from the beginning of the day on which it is made unless the court otherwise directs. The Law Commission, in their consultation on the Sentencing Code (Law Commission Consultation Paper No 232: paragraph 10.23) noted that there is no corresponding legislative provision for the magistrates’ court, although current practice is the same. The amendment at paragraph 51 accordingly extends section 154 so that, unless the court orders otherwise, sentences imposed by the magistrates’ court take effect from the beginning of the day on which they are made.
	Other amendments in this category are of a similar nature. For example, the amendments effected by paragraph 31(4) and 110(17) ensure that specific sentences take effect at the beginning of the day on which they are imposed unless ordered otherwise.
	The amendments effected by paragraphs 66(3) and 110(19) ensure that sentences finish at the end of the final day on which they must be complied with, to remove the uncertainty about when they end if expressed to end "on" that day.
	The second type are those which align the language used to refer to periods of time and better clarify when periods begin.
	For example, in a number of enactments the maximum period for the sentence is expressed as a period "from" the date of the order. A period of time running "from" from a particular event is ambiguous and will usually be taken to exclude the day on which the event takes place (although not always): see Dodds v Walker [1981] 2 All E.R. 609. It is, therefore, no longer standard drafting practice to use "from", and amendments have therefore been made to replace these references with descriptions of a period "beginning with" the date of the order, clarifying that the day of the order itself is counted: see paragraphs 17, 25(5), 46(2) and 128.
	Similarly, a number of provisions relating to requirements that can be imposed as part of a community order or a suspended sentence order express the maximum period that such requirements can be imposed for as a period "beginning with the day on which it is made". These provisions are potentially ambiguous as to whether the maximum period begins from the day the order itself is made, or the day the requirement is imposed (which can be later). Amendments have been made to clarify that the intended effect is the latter: see paragraphs 75, 76 and 78.