R v Lee

Under paragraph 1(5) of Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013, an electronic documentary or pictorial exhibit that never existed in paper form is included in the PPE count only if the Determining Officer considers that appropriate. The decisive consideration is whether the material was of central importance to the trial. Material that is merely helpful to the defence, served evidence, an exhibit to a witness statement, or a large body of potentially irrelevant data does not require wholesale inclusion. A telephone download should be assessed by data category, with a sensible percentage allowance where only part of an image category is relevant.

Ashcott Solicitors Ltd appealed under regulation 29 of the Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013 against a Legal Aid Agency Determining Officer’s assessment of the Pages of Prosecution Evidence count payable under the Litigators’ Graduated Fee Scheme.

The appellant had represented Joshua Lee in a prosecution involving substantial mobile-phone evidence. A 34,812-page download report was served. The Officer allowed communications, location, attribution and web data, together with 10% of the image data, but rejected a claim for the full 10,000-page cap. The central issue was whether further sections of the download, including device, log, password, upload and image data, should be included under Schedule 2, paragraph 1(5).

1. Disposition and burden. The appeal was dismissed. The appellant had to demonstrate that further electronic evidence, beyond that already allowed, should be included in the PPE count, consistently with R v Lawrence [2022] EWHC 3355 (SCCO). The court reviewed the download report supplied after the hearing but found no basis for increasing the allowance.
2. Applicable approach. Paragraph 1(5) of Schedule 2 to the Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013 confers a discretion in relation to electronically served exhibits that never existed in paper form. Applying the guidance in Lord Chancellor v SVS Solicitors [2017] EWHC 1045 (QB), the decisive question was whether the material was of central importance to the trial, rather than merely helpful or important to the defence. Lord Chancellor v Edward Hayes LLP & Anor [2017] EWHC 138 (QB) supported assessing the relevant category of electronic data. The authorities including The Lord Chancellor v Lam & Meerbux Solicitors [2023] EWHC 1186 (KB) and R v Gyamfi [2022] EWHC 2550 supported a category-based count and sensible approximation where only part of an image category was relevant. PPE is a proxy for preparation required by the difficulty and evidential weight of the case, not simply the number of pages perused, as recorded in R v Bowman & D’Arcy [2022] EWHC 2109 SCCO.
3. Application to the download. The prosecution case turned principally on messaging data, which had been allowed. The additional device-connectivity, log-entry, password and upload sections were not shown to be of central importance. Possible usefulness to the defence, or the hope that something relevant might be found in largely irrelevant data, was insufficient. The arguments based on R v Mooney SCCO 99/18 and R v Jackson did not establish any rule requiring an entire download to be counted merely because it was served or exhibited.
4. Images. The image section resembled the standard and largely innocuous material considered in R v Hussain [2023] EWHC 3126. The prosecution case was based on messaging rather than images. The 10% allowance was more than fair. The court also noted that video evidence did not fall within the PPE count, as confirmed in Lord Chancellor v IMS Law [2025] EWHC 2018 (KB). The appeal therefore failed and was dismissed.

1. High Court (Senior Courts Costs Office): Ashcott Solicitors Ltd appealed under regulation 29 of the Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013 against the Legal Aid Agency Determining Officer’s PPE assessment. The appeal was dismissed in [2026] EWHC 2438 (SCCO) .