R v Campbell & Sobers
[2023] EWHC 1329 (SCCO)
R v Ngoc Nguyen Minh
10 May 2023
[2023] EWHC 1327 (SCCO)
Senior Courts Costs Office
Lawyers appealed a bill, arguing they should be paid more because they had to look through thousands of pages of phone data. The judge said they only needed to look at the important bits, and the bill was already correct.
Key Facts
- •Appeal concerns payment to Drummond Solicitors under the Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013.
- •Payment calculated based on the number of served Pages of Prosecution Evidence (PPE).
- •Dispute over the appropriate PPE count; Appellant claimed 10,000, Determining Officer assessed 2,108.
- •Case involved representation of Ngoc Nguyen Minh, charged with supplying Class A drugs.
- •Evidence included police reports, physical evidence, and two mobile phone download reports (over 30,000 pages for one phone).
- •Appellant argued all download data was relevant and should be included in PPE count.
- •Determining Officer included specific categories of download data and 5% of image data.
Legal Principles
Served electronic evidence which has never existed in paper form is not included in PPE count unless the Determining Officer deems it appropriate.
Schedule 2, paragraph 1(5) of the 2013 Regulations
Inclusion of served electronic evidence depends on whether it is of central importance to the trial, not merely helpful or important to the defence.
Lord Chancellor v SVS Solicitors [2017] EWHC 1045 (QB) (Holroyde J)
If prosecution relies on a report extracted from served electronic evidence, all of the evidence in that category should generally be included.
Lord Chancellor v Edward Hayes LLP & Anor [2017] EWHC 138 (QB) (Davies J)
The test for inclusion in the PPE count is whether the evidence was of central importance to the trial, not whether it was necessary for the defence to review it.
Judgement of Costs Judge Leonard
Established practice allows for 5% of image data from electronic downloads in PPE count, excluding irrelevant data.
R v Sereika SCCO Ref: 168/13 and R v Gyamfi [2022] EWHC 2550 (SCCO)
Outcomes
Appeal dismissed.
The Determining Officer's approach was reasonable; only centrally important data from the phone downloads was included, along with a standard 5% of images. The Appellant failed to demonstrate that a higher allowance should be made.