[2025] EWCA Crim 1235

The judge said that he would treat the robbery offence as the lead offence. He said that there was an obvious inference from the way in which the applicant was holding the screwdriver, with the sharp end pointing out of his clenched fist; that showed that the applicant sought to put whoever he might encounter, as he tried to steal from the shop, including the security guards, in fear of violence. The applicant was holding the screwdriver in that way in order to demonstrate that he had a sharp-edged weapon. The judge said that the production of this weapon to threaten violence in order to steal placed the offence within the medium culpability factor, but that it fell only just short of the high culpability factor which would have applied if there had been production of a bladed article. The harm caused fell into the lowest category. It was a category 3B offence, with a starting point of two years' imprisonment and a range of between one and four years.

The judge then said this: