R v Rimon Ali
[2024] EWHC 1699 (SCCO)
R v Munemo
27 June 2023
[2023] EWHC 1636 (SCCO)
Senior Courts Costs Office
Lawyers appealed a payment decision based on how many pages of evidence they had to review. The evidence was on a computer, not paper, and was hard to use. The judge agreed that because the evidence was harder to look at, the lawyers should be paid more.
Key Facts
- •Appeal concerning payment to defence solicitors under the Litigators’ Graduated Fee Scheme (Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013).
- •Dispute over the calculation of Pages of Prosecution Evidence (PPE) based on electronically served evidence.
- •Large volumes of electronic data (telephone download reports) were served in spreadsheet format, not readily convertible to a page count.
- •Determining Officer limited PPE count to call, messaging and contact data, excluding images and web links.
- •Appellant argued that images and web links were crucial evidence, requiring significant review and thus should be included in PPE count.
Legal Principles
Served evidence (evidence the prosecution relies on) is included in PPE count; unused material is not.
Lord Chancellor v SVS Solicitors [2017] EWHC 1045 (QB)
Formal service is not required for inclusion in PPE count; informal handover suffices.
Lord Chancellor v SVS Solicitors [2017] EWHC 1045 (QB)
Electronic evidence which has never existed in paper form may be excluded from PPE count at the Determining Officer's discretion, considering the nature of the document and relevant circumstances.
Schedule 2, paragraph 1(5), Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013
Key criterion for including electronic evidence in PPE count: whether the evidence was of central importance to the trial.
Lord Chancellor v SVS Solicitors [2017] EWHC 1045 (QB)
Where prosecution relies on part of electronic data, all data might need inclusion if parts can only be fairly considered in context of the whole.
Lord Chancellor v SVS Solicitors [2017] EWHC 1045 (QB)
If key prosecution evidence is extracted from electronic data, all data in that category should usually be included in PPE count.
Lord Chancellor v Edward Hayes LLP & Anor [2017] EWHC 138 (QB)
A 'rough and ready analysis' or 'sensible approximation' is acceptable when assessing electronic material for PPE count.
The Lord Chancellor v Lam & Meerbux Solicitors [2023] EWHC 1186 (KB)
Outcomes
Appeal successful.
Determining Officer's PPE count was too low because it excluded crucial image data and failed to account for the difficulty of navigating the spreadsheet format.