Section 117: business and other documents

Business-document hearsayGlossary termBusiness-document hearsay is shorthand for a wider occupational-document route. Section 117(1)–(3) requires that oral evidence of the matter would be admissible and that the following chain is established:

• The document, or the relevant part of it, was created or received in the course of a trade, business, profession or other occupation, or by a holder of a paid or unpaid office.
• The person supplying the underlying information had, or may reasonably be supposed to have had, personal knowledge of the matter.
• Each intermediary through whom the information passed received it in the required occupational or office setting.

The original source, the recorder and the person producing the document can be different people. The original information supplier does not have to be an employee simply because the record is occupational. An intermediary, however, must meet the transmission condition. The same person can perform more than one role. Analyse the relevant entry, not merely the document's title or the computer system in which it is stored.

A routine hospital entry of a nurse's own observation, transmitted and recorded through the professional chain, illustrates why the route exists: requiring everyone involved in routine record-making to remember each event personally at trial may add little. It does not follow that a patient's accusation about who caused an injury is the nurse's own observation. That entry requires its own source and purpose analysis.

Documents prepared for a criminal investigation or proceedings. Under s 117(4)–(5), an additional condition applies where the statement was prepared for pending or contemplated criminal proceedings or a criminal investigation, unless one of the specified overseas-evidence exceptions applies. The relevant information supplier must either meet one of the s 116(2) conditions or be someone who cannot reasonably be expected to recollect the matters because of elapsed time or other circumstances. Identify and prove the applicable branch. Being a police officer or having typed a report during paid work is not enough.

The currently listed exceptions in s 117(4)(b) concern a request under Crime (International Co-operation) Act 2003 s 7, an order under Criminal Justice Act 1988 Schedule 13 paragraph 6, or an overseas production order under the Crime (Overseas Production Orders) Act 2019. They disapply this additional condition in the specified cases; they do not abolish the ordinary source and transmission requirements. For a historical overseas process, check the applicable transitional provisions rather than assume that every former route remains available.

Worked contrast. A routine delivery log made before any suspected offence is not converted into an investigation-prepared statement just because an investigator later obtains it. A new investigator's summary prepared to prove a suspected theft must be analysed under the additional-condition provisions. The first may qualify through the ordinary record route; the second does not inherit that position merely by copying information from the first. Any hearsay within the summary must still be dealt with.

Doubtful reliability. Under s 117(7), the court may direct that a statement is not admissible where reliability is doubtful because of its contents, its source, how or in what circumstances information was supplied or received, or how or in what circumstances the document was created or received. Under s 117(6), if that direction is given the statement is not admissible under this section. Keep the distinction: the power to make the direction is discretionary; its consequence, once exercised, is not optional. A damaged audit trail, unexplained alteration or unreliable transmission can therefore raise an admissibility objection, not merely a submission about weight.

Ordinary s 117 records do not require a notice under CrimPR 20.2 solely because they are business documents. The category relying on the additional criminal-proceedings condition does require notice. In either case, an opponent can apply under rule 20.3, disclosure duties remain, and any extra hearsay layers require the s 121 analysis. Section 121(1)(a) expressly accommodates statements admissible under s 117; it does not repair a chain which fails s 117 in the first place.