Peter Joseph Power-Hynes & Anor v Norwich Magistrates' Court & Anor

A search warrant must identify, so far as practicable, the articles to be sought within the warrant itself. Information given privately to the issuing judge cannot cure an inadequate description. The warrant must be sufficiently precise for occupants and executing officers to understand its scope. Where material in an accountant’s possession may include special procedure material, a warrant under section 8 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 cannot authorise its seizure. The statutory procedure under section 9 and Schedule 1 must be used instead. A warrant expressed to cover broad categories such as high-value financial transactions is unlawful where it may capture unrelated client records.

The claimants sought judicial review of a district judge’s decision on 25 February 2009 to issue a warrant under section 8 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. The warrant authorised a search of premises used partly as an accountant’s office and partly as residential accommodation, for documents and records relating to high-value financial transactions.

The police were investigating suspected fraud involving Alan Hunt and Humanitarian Coalition Aid Foundation Ltd. The search resulted in the removal of unrelated client files, computers and material potentially falling within the statutory definition of special procedure material. The central issues were whether the warrant sufficiently identified the articles to be sought and whether a section 8 warrant could authorise a search likely to include special procedure material.

1. The warrant was quashed. The court granted permission and allowed the judicial review claim because the warrant was unlawful.
2. Section 15(6)(b) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 required the warrant itself to identify, so far as practicable, the articles to be sought. The description of documents and records relating to high-value financial transactions was too vague. The meaning of high value depended on context, and the description could include material unrelated to Alan Hunt or Humanitarian Coalition Aid Foundation Ltd. A sufficient description would have been documents or records relating to Hunt or HCAF.
3. The information supplied to the district judge could not cure the defect. The warrant had to be a self-contained statement of the articles for which the search was authorised, so that those whose property was affected could ascertain its scope from the warrant itself. The court distinguished R (Fitzpatrick) v Chief Constable of Warwickshire [1999] 1 WLR 564, because that warrant contained an express limitation to material relating to the stated offence.
4. The court applied the precision principle expressed in Energy Financing Team Ltd v The Director of the Serious Fraud Office [2005] EWHC 1626 (Admin) and treated the present case as indistinguishable in principle from R (AJD Holdings) v Central Criminal Court [1992] Crim LR 669.
5. Once the police knew that the occupier was a professional accountant and company secretary, there was a real possibility that material in his possession included special procedure material. The broad warrant made that possibility a likelihood. Section 8(1)(d) was therefore not satisfied, and a justice had no authority to issue the warrant. An application should instead have been made under section 9 and Schedule 1. The purported exclusion of special procedure material in the application was ineffective because the warrant contained no such exclusion and such material was in fact seized.
6. It was unnecessary to decide whether the police should have sought a production order as the less intrusive remedy.