Background
Kamrans Solicitors represented Lawrence Mafune in Crown Court proceedings concerning the alleged supply of Class A and Class B drugs. The prosecution relied on messages extracted from two seized phones and served comprehensive telephone-download reports as spreadsheets. Mafune admitted supplying Class B drugs and later admitted supplying cocaine, but disputed aspects of the prosecution’s case, including the alleged duration and joint nature of the offending.
The non-electronic prosecution evidence comprised 871 pages. The electronic material took the total beyond the 10,000-page cap used to calculate the graduated fee, and the solicitors sought additional payment under paragraph 20(1)(b) of Schedule 2 to the Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013. Their original claim was limited to 342 hours and 36 minutes spent reviewing chat data. The Legal Aid Agency’s Determining Officer allowed only 60 hours, reasoning that special preparation was confined to non-PPE electronic material or “residual content.”
The Court’s Holding
Costs Judge Leonard allowed the appeal. The Determining Officer had overlooked that paragraph 20(1)(b) expressly permits a special-preparation payment for the reasonable time required to read prosecution evidence exceeding the 10,000-page cap. The fact that some material from the same electronic dataset had already counted toward the capped graduated fee did not prevent payment for reviewing qualifying PPE beyond that limit.
After filtering blank, contentless, and obviously irrelevant spreadsheet material, the court sensibly approximated the relevant chat data at 66,312 pages. Deducting the 9,129 electronic pages already included within the capped PPE count left 57,183 excess pages. The claimed 342 hours and 36 minutes amounted to less than half a minute per page and was reasonable given the volume of data. The court therefore awarded the full claimed time, plus £500 exclusive of VAT for appeal costs and reimbursement of the £100 appeal fee.
The court allowed nothing for reviewing the “Applications Usage” worksheet because that work was outside the original claim and the data had not been shown to be centrally important prosecution evidence. By contrast, the chat data qualified as PPE because the prosecution relied on extracted messages and the underlying messaging data required review in context.
Key Takeaways
- Paragraph 20(1)(b) permits special-preparation fees for reasonable time spent reviewing PPE beyond the 10,000-page graduated-fee cap.
- Including part of an electronic dataset within the capped PPE count does not disqualify excess qualifying pages from supporting a special-preparation claim.
- Spreadsheet page counts require sensible approximation, including filtering blank, contentless, and obviously irrelevant material.
Why It Matters
The decision clarifies the relationship between capped graduated fees and additional payment for exceptionally large bodies of electronic prosecution evidence. A determining officer must assess the reasonable time needed to review qualifying PPE above the cap, rather than treating special preparation as confined to non-PPE material.
For criminal legal-aid practitioners, the judgment also underscores the importance of defining the original claim precisely, documenting the time spent, and showing why the electronic material was central to the prosecution case.