Kalonji v Wood Green Crown Court

Custody time limits may be extended for listing difficulties where exceptional pressures have created a genuine and temporary shortage of courts or judges. The court must examine rigorously both the cause of the pressure and the proposed steps to alleviate it. Those steps must have a realistic prospect of improving the position. Resource limitations are relevant, but they do not automatically justify an extension. In a routine case, ordinary or systemic listing difficulties will generally be insufficient. The Crown Court’s assessment is primary, and the supervisory court should interfere only where it is clearly wrong.

The claimant sought judicial review of His Honour Judge Pawlak’s decision of 15 August 2007 to extend the custody time limit for his pending robbery trial at Wood Green Crown Court. The trial was listed for 19 November 2007, while the custody time limit expired in August. The extension was based on exceptional court and judicial pressures arising from court closures, reallocation of work and delayed judicial appointments. The central issue was whether those circumstances constituted good and sufficient cause under section 22(3) of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985, and whether the prosecution had acted with due diligence and expedition.

1. Application dismissed. The Crown Court judge was entitled to find exceptional circumstances and good and sufficient cause for extending the custody time limit.
2. Under section 22(3) of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985, the prosecution must establish, on the balance of probabilities, both that the extension is required for good and sufficient cause and that it has acted with all due diligence and expedition. Custody time limits protect unconvicted defendants and seek to ensure that detention is as short as reasonably and practically possible.
3. The unavailability of a suitable courtroom or judge may constitute good and sufficient cause in an appropriate case. The court must examine the circumstances rigorously, including the length of the proposed extension. Resource shortages are relevant and cannot be ignored, although they do not automatically justify an extension.
4. The relevant inquiry is whether exceptional pressures have caused the difficulty and whether steps taken to alleviate them have a realistic prospect of success. If delays are not being alleviated, the position may amount to systemic failure, analogous to the circumstances discussed in R v Blair.
5. Routine cases ordinarily should not receive extensions merely because listing resources are unavailable. This case was different because the evidence showed unusually intense pressures, a substantial temporary shortage of courts and judges, redistribution of work, and measures intended to relieve the pressure.
6. The primary decision was for the Crown Court judge. Having heard full argument, that decision was not clearly wrong and should not be disturbed. The claimant was entitled to the costs determination sought.

This was a judicial review application. Permission had previously been granted by a differently constituted Divisional Court on 10 October 2007. The application was then dismissed by the present Divisional Court.