Held, appeal dismissed. (1) The Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 required an applicant to consult the youth offending team in three circumstances, namely, before applying for a civil injunction against a minor, before applying for variation or discharge of such an injunction and before making an application for a supervision order or a detention order in relation to a minor. As the youth offending team had an important role in getting the young person to adhere to the conditions in the injunction, it was important that they were consulted on those occasions as their input regarding any conditions or penalty to be imposed was of particular importance, as was reinforced by the fact that their views were a mandatory consideration for the court in respect of penalty for breach. In each of those cases the relevant statutory provisions made clear that the applicant was required to consult the youth offending team before making the application and about the application. However, there was no express requirement to consult prior to arresting the minor for breach and none could be implied. Instead, arrest automatically triggered the requirement to produce the young person within 24 hours of arrest, which began the proceedings for breach. It followed that the chief constable had not been required to consult with the youth offending team prior to arrest or prior to the minor being produced at court. By sending papers to the court that morning, the chief constable had been informing the justice of the peace before whom the minor was required to be produced of the reason why he had been arrested and detained overnight. No application for a supervision or detention order had been made that day and, instead, in accordance with section 9(6), the minor had been remanded to appear before the youth court on a future hearing date. The district judge having found as a fact that the chief constable had consulted with the youth offending team on 31 July and 25 September 2019, before the contested breach hearing on 30 September and before any oral or written application had been made for a supervision order or a detention order to be imposed on the minor, he had been correct to reject the submission that the consultation had taken place too late (paras 48–55, 61).

(2) The purpose of paragraph 1(3) of Schedule 2 to the 2014 Act was to require consultation with the youth offending team regarding an application for one of the two penalties available for breach of a section 1 injunction, namely, a supervision order or a detention order. Although there was no obligation to consult the youth offending team about whether to commence breach proceedings, the obligation in paragraph 1(3)(a) encompassed not only seeking the team’s views as to whether, if a breach were found, the appropriate penalty would be a supervision order or a detention order but also enabling the team to express the view (where appropriate in the team’s opinion) that the applicant ought not to continue the breach proceedings, or that no penalty ought to be imposed, and taking any views expressed into account. An important consideration in assessing the adequacy of a consultation was the nature of those involved and it was relevant here that the youth offending team was a professional organisation which worked in co-operation with each of the public bodies that was entitled to apply for an injunction, variation, discharge or supervision or detention order. For the consultation to be adequate, it was sufficient that the chief constable had provided all the relevant evidence and materials to the youth offending team, who were fully cognisant of the background having been engaged in the consultation before the injunction was imposed, and that the chief constable had sought the team’s views regarding the appropriate penalty before the contested breach proceedings. The chief constable had not needed to ask the team specifically whether, in their view, the breach proceedings should continue, in the absence of any evidence that they had considered the proceedings should not continue and where, if that had been the team’s view, they had had an opportunity to express it during the consultation on 31 July and 25 September. In those circumstances, it being accepted that the chief constable had consulted about the proposed penalty, the district judge had been correct to find that the mandatory consultation requirement under paragraph 1(3) of Schedule 2 to the 2014 Act had been complied with (paras 56, 61–65, 86).