What Is a Community Order and How Does It Work?

A community order is a criminal sentence served in the community rather than in prison, available in England and Wales for anyone aged 18 or over. It can run for up to three years and is built from one or more of 16 possible requirements, chosen by the judge, ranging from unpaid work to drug rehabilitation. It sits above a fine and below custody: used where the offence is too serious for a fine alone but not so serious that prison is unavoidable. The governing rules are in the Sentencing Act 2020.

When a Court Will Impose One

A court can only impose a community order if the offence, by itself or with any associated offences, is serious enough to justify it. The restrictions on your liberty have to be proportionate to that seriousness, and under section 208 of the Sentencing Act 2020 the specific requirements must be the ones most suitable for you as an individual.¹

Every community order has to include at least one requirement imposed for the purpose of punishment, unless the court also imposes a fine or finds exceptional circumstances that would make a punitive requirement unjust.¹ Judges also check that the requirements don’t clash with each other, with your religious beliefs, or with your work or education.

The Three Severity Bands

The Sentencing Council groups community orders into three bands based on how close the offence comes to the custody threshold:²

Low band: the offence only just crosses the community order threshold. Typical punitive requirements are 40 to 80 hours of unpaid work or a short curfew of up to four weeks.
Medium band: clearly past the community order threshold but not near custody. Unpaid work steps up to 80 to 150 hours, or a curfew of up to six months.
High band: just below the custody threshold, or technically over it but a community order is still the better fit. Requirements are at their most intensive, with 150 to 300 hours of unpaid work, curfews up to 24 months, or demanding combinations.

When more than one requirement is attached, the court is expected to moderate the intensity so the whole package stays proportionate to the band. Stacking high-end requirements on a medium-band case would be disproportionate even if each is lawful in isolation.

What the Order Can Contain

Section 201 of the Sentencing Act 2020 lists 16 types of requirement, with the detail set out in Schedule 9.³ The judge picks the combination that fits both the offence and the offender. These are the ones you are most likely to see.

Unpaid Work

Often called community payback, this means 40 to 300 hours of unpaid labour on local projects: clearing graffiti, maintaining public spaces, renovating community buildings. The hours track the severity band, with low-band orders rarely over 80 hours and high-band orders pushing toward 300.²

Rehabilitation Activity Requirement

This directs you to take part in activities aimed at reducing reoffending. The probation officer decides what those activities are: thinking-skills programmes, anger management, structured one-to-one supervision. The flexibility is the point. The officer can adjust the activities as a clearer picture of your needs develops.

Curfew and Electronic Monitoring

A curfew confines you to a specified address for set hours each day. Since the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, the maximum is 20 hours in any single day, with an overall cap of 112 hours in any seven-day period.⁴ A curfew can last up to two years, and electronic monitoring normally comes with it. The tag confirms you are where you should be during curfew hours. Location tags need charging for at least one hour every day, and letting the battery die counts as a potential breach.⁵

Alcohol abstinence and monitoring tags are different. They measure alcohol through the skin rather than tracking location, and you have to stay within range of a wireless base station at a set time each day so the data can be transmitted.⁵ Damaging or tampering with any tag, monitoring unit, or base station is itself a breach.

Exclusion, Residence, and Travel Restrictions

An exclusion requirement bans you from entering specified places. At the high band this might run around 12 months; at the low band, a few months is more usual.² A residence requirement directs you to live at a particular address. A foreign travel prohibition bars travel outside the British Islands entirely, meaning you cannot leave the United Kingdom, Channel Islands, and Isle of Man.

Treatment Requirements

The court can attach mental health treatment, drug rehabilitation, or alcohol treatment where your condition contributed to the offending. Drug rehabilitation is the most prescriptive: at least six months, with regular drug testing throughout. You have to agree to this requirement before the court can impose it, and the court must be satisfied both that you have a treatable dependency and that suitable treatment arrangements are actually available.

The remaining options include programme requirements (accredited structured programmes), prohibited activity requirements, attendance centre requirements for offenders under 25, and standalone drug testing.³

The Pre-Sentence Report

Before imposing a community order, the court normally asks the Probation Service for a pre-sentence report. A probation officer carries out an independent assessment covering your living situation, employment, mental health, substance use, and patterns of behaviour, using structured risk-assessment tools to estimate the likelihood of reoffending and identify what is driving it.

The finished report recommends specific requirements and has to propose something proportionate to the offence while addressing the factors most likely to reduce future offending. Faster, same-day reports are sometimes used for simpler cases, but they tend to be less thorough and less likely to recommend packages with multiple requirements. The judge is not bound by what the report says, but will rarely depart from it without good reason, because the probation officer has access to information about available programmes and your circumstances that the court usually doesn’t.

What Complying Looks Like

Once the order starts, you are assigned a probation officer who manages compliance. The first meeting sets out the reporting schedule, explains each requirement in detail, and makes clear what counts as a breach. You have to attend every scheduled appointment and session, follow every instruction from your supervising officer, and report any change of address or contact details promptly.

If you cannot make a session, you need a legitimate reason backed by evidence: a medical note, a letter from an employer. Not turning up without explanation is treated as non-compliance. The officer keeps detailed records throughout: attendance, progress on rehabilitation activities, unpaid work hours completed, any incidents. That record matters if a breach is later alleged, because the court will use it to judge your overall level of engagement.

If you are on electronic monitoring, the tag data provides an objective record alongside the officer’s notes. A curfew violation that shows up on the tag will be put to you regardless of what you told your officer in person.

What Happens If You Breach

When you fail to comply with any requirement without a reasonable excuse, the Probation Service can start breach proceedings. The case goes back to court, and the judge looks at your overall compliance, not just the incident that triggered the breach. The Sentencing Council links the response to how well you have engaged with the order as a whole:⁶

High overall compliance: you have mostly engaged well but slipped. The court can add a short curfew of 6 to 10 days, 10 to 20 extra hours of unpaid work, or a Band A fine.
Medium overall compliance: engagement has been patchy. Options include 20 to 30 extra hours of unpaid work, a curfew of 10 to 20 days, a Band B fine, or revoking the order and resentencing for the original offence.
Low overall compliance: you have largely failed to engage. The court can add 30 to 50 hours of unpaid work, a curfew of 20 to 30 days, a Band C fine, or revoke and resentence.
Wilful and persistent non-compliance: the court can revoke the order and send you to prison, even if the original offence was not serious enough to warrant custody.⁶

That last point catches people out. An offence that originally earned only a community order can still land you in prison if you persistently refuse to comply. The court also has power under certain procedures to commit you to prison for up to 28 days as a short, sharp response, and can do so up to three times for the same order.⁷

When tougher requirements are added after a breach, the court can extend the order by up to six months, even if that pushes it past the three-year maximum. This extension power can only be used once. The maximum fine for a breach is £2,500.⁶

Judges don’t just tally missed appointments. In deciding how to respond, the court looks at your overall attitude and engagement, how much of the order you have already completed, and whether any completed work has had a positive effect on your behaviour. Timing matters too: failing in the first week looks worse than a lapse near the end of a mostly successful order.⁶ Circumstances outside your control, such as mental health difficulties, a learning disability, or a sudden housing crisis, can explain non-compliance without excusing it, and may lead to adjusted requirements rather than a punitive response.

Changing or Ending the Order Early

A community order is not fixed in place for its full length. The Sentencing Act 2020 lets courts amend requirements during the life of the order, either because your circumstances have changed or because a requirement has become impractical. Either you or your probation officer can apply.

If you have made genuine progress and the order has been running for a reasonable period, the court can revoke it early without resentencing. It is not automatic and needs an application, but it recognises that some people address their behaviour faster than the original sentence assumed. One thing the court cannot do as a standalone step is simply extend the length of an order without changing any requirements; any extension has to be tied to adding or completing requirements.

1
Legislation.gov.uk. Sentencing Act 2020 Section 208
2
Sentencing Council. Imposition of Community and Custodial Sentences
3
Legislation.gov.uk. Sentencing Act 2020 Section 201
4
Legislation.gov.uk. Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 Section 150
5
GOV.UK. Electronic Tags
6
Sentencing Council. Breach of a Community Order
7
Legislation.gov.uk. Sentencing Act 2020 Schedule 10 Part 2