R v Herve Mpanzu [2025] EWHC 1582 (SCCO)

[2025] EWHC 1582 (SCCO)Case No 01MP1231223SCCO Reference: SC-2024-CRI-000139
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
SENIOR COURTS COSTS OFFICE
Thomas More Building
Venue Royal Courts of JusticeDate 24 June 2025
London, WC2A 2LL
Before
SENIOR COSTS JUDGE ROWLEYRvHerve MpanzuJudgment on Appeal under Regulation 29 of theCriminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013Appellant: CG Law (Solicitors)The appeal has been successful for the reasons set out below.The appropriate additional payment, to which should be added the sum of £1,250 (exclusive of VAT) for costs and the £100 paid on appeal, should accordingly be made to the Applicant.SENIOR COSTS JUDGE ROWLEY
Between
Herve MpanzuDefendantRCrown

Senior Costs Judge Rowley:

[1]This is an appeal by CG Law solicitors against the number of pages of prosecution evidence (“PPE”) allowed by the determining officer when calculating the litigator’s graduated fee under the Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013, as amended (“the 2013 Regulations”).[2]The solicitors represented Herve Mpanzu who faced an indictment relating to numerous counts involving Class A drugs. Under the heading “facts” the determining officer sets out the following description of the offences faced by Mpanzu and the issue regarding PPE:
“The litigator represented Herve Mpanzu pursuant to a representation order issued in April 2024 charged with: Being concerned in supplying a controlled drug of class A to another x 6 counts Offering to supply a controlled drug of class A to another x 3 counts At the conclusion of the case, the litigator claimed a 10,000 PPE (capped), trial fee. Payment of a trial fee with 7154 PPE was allowed. The allowance for PPE did not increase as a result of the litigator’s requests for redetermination. The litigator now seeks written reasons as to why PPE has not been allowed as claimed.”
Being concerned in supplying a controlled drug of class A to another x 6 counts

Offering to supply a controlled drug of class A to another x 3 counts

[3]The PPE count is one of the component parts of calculating the graduated fee. As the determining officer’s summary notes, there is a 10,000 pages cap. The solicitors are therefore claiming the maximum PPE. The determining officer has allowed paper PPE at 76 pages of statements and 437 pages of exhibits. The electronic PPE has been allowed at 6,641 pages. If the argument put forward by the solicitors is correct, then mathematically the increase would be by more than 4,900 pages but given the cap, the difference between the parties is 2,846 pages.[4]The determining officer’s task requires her to consider Paragraph 1(2) to (5) of the 2013 Regulations which say:
“(2) For the purposes of this Schedule, the number of pages of prosecution evidence served on the court must be determined in accordance with sub-paragraphs (3) to (5). (3) The number of pages of prosecution evidence includes all— (a) witness statements; (b) documentary and pictorial exhibits; (c) records of interviews with the assisted person; and (d) records of interviews with other defendants, which form part of the committal or served prosecution documents or which are included in any notice of additional evidence. (4) Subject to sub-paragraph (5), a document served by the prosecution in electronic form is included in the number of pages of prosecution evidence. (5) A documentary or pictorial exhibit which — (a) has been served by the prosecution in electronic form; and (b) has never existed in paper form, is not included within the number of pages of prosecution evidence unless the appropriate officer decides that it would be appropriate to include it in the pages of prosecution evidence taking into account the nature of the document and any other relevant circumstances.”
[5]These subparagraphs manifest the evolution in PPE. In the regime prior to the 2013 Regulations (the Criminal Defence Service Funding Order 2007) the wording of what is now subparagraphs two and three can be seen but rather than subparagraphs four and five, the 2007 Order simply stated that PPE “does not include any document provided on CD – ROM or by other means of electronic communication.”[6]The 2013 Regulations coincided with the criminal proceedings entering the “Digital Age”. There have been challenges to the meaning of subparagraphs (2) to (5) ever since their introduction. Questions as to what constituted service of electronic PPE and how central the evidence had to be for it to be appropriate to include it as PPE produced endless appeals until the decision of Holroyde J (as he then was) in Lord Chancellor v SVS Solicitors [2017] EWHC 1045 (QB).[7]It has become much less common for there to be any challenge in respect of service or importance for several years. I have set out the facts by the determining officer in part to show that she did not consider it necessary even to refer to these elements when setting out the PPE that had been allowed. Electronic evidence, particularly in relation to mobile phones often appears to be the key evidence in a case. Martin McCarthy KC, who appeared on behalf of the solicitors at the hearing of this appeal, described the evidence in these terms and Rupert Cohen of counsel, who appeared on behalf of the Legal Aid Agency unsurprisingly did not seek to differ and nor indeed did the written representations of the LAA.[8]The battleground, if that is the correct term, has subsequently moved on to quantification of the electronic PPE. Previous costs judge decisions have established that the PDF format is to be preferred for this purpose rather than other formats such as Excel since it mimics paper pages much more accurately. In particular, the “print preview” function in Excel produces what often seemed to be unreliable page counts. Where such documents are then converted into PDF format the difficulty is not cured, but simply crystallised.[9]A new front was opened, at least as far as appeals to the costs judges of the Senior Courts Costs Office is concerned, in 2019. Costs Judge Leonard in R v Zigaras and R v Nikontas (18 November 2019) was faced with considering what exactly constituted an electronic page. What appeared to be a single page in a PDF was in fact equivalent to an A1 sized piece of paper rather than A4. If it had been printed out, a single “page” in the PDF was eight times larger than would be expected if the PDF page was simply mimicking a standard A4 paper page. Judge Leonard concluded that it would be reasonable to allow 4 pages for each A1 page by way of PPE. I took a different view in R v Francis (16 July 2020) inasmuch as I allowed eight pages for each A1 page.[10]The determining officer in this case has essentially followed the Zigaras approach and the solicitors contend for the Francis approach. In other words, the dispute is as to whether the A1 sized pages served by the prosecution should be quantified, in terms of PPE, at four pages or eight pages per A1 page.[11]In her written reasons, the determining officer says the following in preferring the Zigaras (Nikontas) approach:
“The determining officer will take into account the nature of the document and any other relevant circumstances. As such the page count allowed for a given document will be based on an assessment of reasonableness. The Cost Judges in R v Francis and R v Nikontas apply contrasting approaches which the determining officer can take into consideration. But one does not in any way invalidate the other and neither remove the determining officer’s discretion to complete a qualitative assessment of the electronic material. While the determining officer accepts that, where a PDF is presented in a page size that would make it illegible, the page count can be scaled up to a more reasonable one, they do not accept that scaling an A1 page count by x8 is a reasonable approach. In these circumstances the determining officer only relies on R v Nikontas in so far as the approach taken is the more reasonable of the two. Namely, that any upscaled page count should be based on the number of pages the data would likely encompass had it been presented in a legible font size. Although 8 A4 pages can physically fit into an A1 page, to apply this literally to a typical document by dividing them into 8 separate pages would make the data no more legible. This would result in the data being disjointed and in an unusually large font size. The determining officer does not accept that the Litigator would have, in practical terms, been able to consider the data any easier had it been split up into 8 separate pages per A1 page. To increase the page count by 8 times the original would unduly inflate the page count and is not representative of the amount of data that actually had to be considered. This would disrupt the fair and reasonable economic balance of the remuneration in any given case. It is the determining officer’s view that for a typical document by adopting the approach taken in R v Nikontas and scaling the pages by 4 times the original page count, we come to a reasonable estimation [of the] number [of] pages that the amount of data in the schedules would encompass if it was presented in a standard font size.”
[12]The arguments put forward by the determining officer in support of her decision in these paragraphs, largely revolve around the question of legibility. There is also the comment that, as a matter of practicality, splitting up the paper into 8 pages would not make the consideration of the data any easier. This latter argument seems to me to assume that the format in which the data is manipulated has any bearing on the calculation of the appropriate number of pages of PPE. That argument was won by the LAA when costs judges concluded that the (usually lower) PDF page count should be preferred to the Excel page count. The reasoning was that the PDF mimicked the paper page and should be used for calculating the number of pages, even though it was clear that in many, if not most, cases the Excel format was the one used by litigators and advocates. The conclusion that an A1 page should be treated as equating to 4 or 8 pages of A4 has, in my judgment, nothing to do with the ease with which the data could have been considered.[13]The main reason of the determining officer is that “any upscaled page count should be based on the number of pages the data would likely encompass had it been presented in a legible font size.” What is a legible font size? In my view, it is the one that is reasonable when the page is looked at as an A4 page. I am not aware of anyone attempting to print out the A1 page on an A1 piece of paper to see how large the font appears in its “natural” format. But I think it is reasonable to assume, all things being equal, that it would appear in a size 11 or 12 font which is the standard for documents produced for reading. The fact that e.g. footnotes are legible in a smaller font size does not make it reasonable to use such fonts to justify a lower page count.[14]The quantification of paper PPE is entirely based on A4 pages. If legibility were relevant, the logic of the determining officer’s argument would mean that the paper PPE could be printed as two A5 pages on a single A4 page and then counted as a single page for PPE purposes. At a stroke, the PPE would be halved.[15]Furthermore, the legibility argument is not something that the LAA used to put forward. In the first post Digital Age incarnation of the Crown Court Fee Guidance in 2015, the PPE Guidance at Appendix D, paragraph 11 said:
“Any page that is allowable is to be counted as one page regardless of the number of lines. No allowance should be made for either small or large typefaces.”
[16]It is clear that if a large typeface were used, more pages than might otherwise be deemed reasonable, would be payable just as if a small typeface had been used and fewer pages had been required. The question of legibility in terms of font size did not arise. In my view, using the zoom function on a PDF to take a view about the correct size of the font is an arbitrary and unattractive approach.[17]Finally, in relation to the determining officer’s reasons, I am afraid that I do not follow the final sentence of the determining officer quoted above. Why is 4 pages the “reasonable estimation” of the number of pages required to fit in the data “if it was presented in a standard font size”? There is simply no explanation of why only half the A1 page (i.e. 4 A4 pages) would be needed to fit in the data at a standard font. For reasons I will come on to, the LAA now argue that the “usable data” only fills approximately half the page but the determining officer makes no such distinction.[18]Consequently, in terms of the solicitors’ challenge to the determining officer’s reasons for the number of pages of PPE that should be allowed per A1 page, I find for the solicitors and the further PPE up to the 10,000 page threshold should be allowed.[19]In coming to this conclusion, I have barely cited anything submitted by either Mr McCarthy or Mr Cohen. That is because the appeal, although ostensibly against the determining officer’s written reasons, is in reality no such thing. Regulation 29 of the 2013 Regulations requires the appeal to be against the determining officer’s reasons. However, subparagraph 7 of that regulation allows for the Lord Chancellor to arrange for written or oral representations to be made “with a view to ensuring that the public interest is taken into account.”[20]As a result, the Lord Chancellor, through the written submissions of Mr Orde of the LAA, as well as via Mr Cohen, has made representations that the determining officer’s decision should be upheld but on different grounds. In a nutshell, the allowance of the PPE by the determining officer should follow guidance given by Mr Justice Cotter in the case of the Lord Chancellor v Lam and Meerbux [2023] EWHC 1186 (KB) and as demonstrated by the decision of Costs Judge Brown in R v Bowen [2024] EWHC 2071 (SCCO).[21]In Meerbux, Cotter J began his judgment as follows:
“The issue can be set out shortly. The learned Judge held that the formal page count in the Crown Court Digital Case System (“DCS”) should be used for the purposes of counting pages of prosecution evidence (“PPE”) within the Appellant’s litigator’s graduated fee scheme claim. The Lord Chancellor argues that Master Whalan erred in law and that the effect of his judgment is that the Respondent will be paid a substantial sum for reviewing thousands of blank pages.”
[22]At paragraph 15, he recorded the appeal to the costs

judge as:

“Costs Judge Whalan noted that the “limited but important” issue on the appeal was whether the determining officer should simply accept the DCS count or whether he/she [was] “to reduce the count having identified pages that are apparently blank or duplicates.”
[23]At paragraphs 36 and 37, he cited the description of Holroyde J in SVS of paragraph 1(5) of Schedule 2 of the 2013 Regulations being “an important and valuable control mechanism which ensures that public funds are not expended inappropriately” and said specifically that:
“In my view the word “inappropriately” is intended to cover circumstances of significant overpayment; such as for consideration of pages of an exhibit that required no consideration at all because they were blank or contained no usable data.”
[24]At paragraphs 53 and 54, Cotter J described the difference between paper PPE which he described as being automatically paid and electronic PPE where the starting point, according to Paragraph 1(5) is that it is not included as PPE at all. In particular, he said “If the intention was that electronic evidence was to be treated exactly the same as paper evidence there would have been no such distinction drawn and no discretion provided in relation to it, a fortiori that the overall aim was to produce a largely mechanistic process. However the rationale for separate consideration is obvious when one considers the nature of some forms of electronic evidence particularly in relation to mobile phones, which have never existed in paper form. A very large proportion of the data presented in electronic format will be irrelevant given the limited issues in a criminal trial. Also it can often be searched to allow reference to material aspects and the whole mass of data does not need to be considered.”[25]Cotter J reached his conclusion in the following three paragraphs (at 62 to 64):
“In my judgment, as was recognised in Sereika and Lawrence, when conducting any assessment of electronic material there is nothing wrong, if it is necessary and appropriate, with a rough and ready analysis; a “sensible approximation”
. It is an entirely proper approach to consider the content of a documentary or pictorial exhibit and conclude that only a proportion of the pages should count as PPE. The perfect must not be the enemy of the good in this regard. Disagreement between parties as to whether there are 1,000 or 1,500 blank or data free pages in a 3,000 page exhibit may result in a broadbrush assessment, but the potential for disagreement, could not justify the conclusion that all 3,000 pages should be seen as PPE. If considered necessary documents and/or information can be requested under regulation 28(6) (or in respect of an appeal to a Costs Judge regulation 29(11)) to assist the assessment process. However blank pages contain no evidence and I struggle with the proposition that the assessment of whether a page is technically blank (whatever that means) is not blindingly obvious. It takes a glance and no more. Accordingly for the reasons set out above the Costs Judge fell into error and the determining officer was well within his rights to exclude blank pages in the assessment of PPE. Indeed I can see no reason not to do so as a matter of principle, the sole issue being the extent to which it is possible to carry out a reasonable and proportionate assessment of the number of pages which were actually blank.”[26]These concluding paragraphs make reference to two other cases. The first of these is R v Sereika (SCCO ref 168/13) where the then Senior Costs Judge, Andrew Gordon-Saker, considered electronic evidence which consisted of at least 20,000 images on the defendant’s phone. Having considered that the vast majority of those images were not relevant and so did not require any consideration, he allowed 5% of the images and said at paragraph 18 of his judgment:
“It seems to me that in these circumstances there is no reason why a determining officer (or costs judge on appeal) should not take a broad approach and conclude that as only a proportion of the images may be of real significance to the case, only that proportion should be included in the page count. Inevitably that will be nothing more than “rough justice” in the sense of being compounded of much sensible approximation: per Russell LJ in Re Eastwood [1974] 3 WLR 454 at 458. But that is the nature of the assessment of costs.”
[27]In R v Lawrence [2022] EWHC 355 Costs Judge Brown upheld a determining officer who allowed 5% of images on a broadbrush basis in line with the Senior Costs Judge’s comments in Sereika. Judge Brown described the problem with assessing pages of electronic material was that it tended to include a large amount of irrelevant material as was the case there. In order to count as PPE, it required some consideration as opposed to material that only required a glance.[28]The decision in Meerbux was handed down in May 2023 and it appears that the only case which has applied it to the situation in this case is Bowen, as mentioned above. Indeed, it is noteworthy that the determining officer’s written reasons cite no fewer than 25 decisions which either she or the solicitors considered to be relevant but Meerbux is not mentioned, even though it was delivered more than eighteen months before the written reasons were produced in November 2024.[29]In Bowen,

Judge Brown cites a further passage from Meerbux (paragraph 57) which states:

“…The lodestar of the assessment of electronic evidence is the aim to ensure that remuneration is appropriate and to avoid either underpayment, when consideration has been given to its content, or overpayment through “golden bonuses”, simply because there is a large volume of such evidence, even though it has not been considered…”
[30]Based on this passage, Judge Brown rejected Mr McCarthy’s contention that Cotter J’s decision was directed solely at the issue of whether blank pages should count as PPE. He said, at paragraph 13:
“Cotter J cited with approval the approach set out in Jalibaghodelezhi which has been the standard approach and, to my mind, is too well established to be open to serious doubt. He plainly had at the forefront of his mind the point that the discretion under the scheme [is] to be exercised to ensure public funds were not expended inappropriately.”
[31]The phrase “expended inappropriately” was a deliberate echo by Judge Brown of Holdroyde J’s comments in SVS and the interpretation of them by Cotter J regarding there being no need to consider at all exhibits that were “blank or contained no usable data.” The phrase “contains no usable data” was underlined by Judge Brown and this extension from simply blank pages was relied upon by Mr Cohen in his submissions to me.[32]Mr Cohen also relied on a number of other passages in Bowen. For example, Judge Brown’s comment that he had been provided with PDF samples of the raw material which he had been taken through by Mr McCarthy. The documents were divided into columns and rows and it was plain to Judge Brown that at least some of the columns in the table would not need to be looked at closely by the prosecution or the defence.[33]Mr Cohen also relied on Judge Brown’s comments that the job of the assessing judge or officer to count pages for the purposes of ascertaining the PPE figure required the exercise of discretion so as to avoid either underpayment or overpayment. By way of example, Excel spreadsheets were not paginated, but could still be used for computing PPE for the purposes of the graduated fee where there was no other format to be used. Judge Brown described the use of pagination generally, and upscaling multiplication specifically, as being tools used in the exercise of the discretion to ascertain a page count which is intended to reflect the amount of work reasonably required.[34]Finally, Mr Cohen relied upon Judge Brown’s comments that material in PDF form can be searched using the find function which he described as being more efficient. In the same paragraph, Judge Brown dismissed Mr McCarthy’s approach of simply counting an A1 sized document as being worth 8 pages of PPE as being inappropriate where, for example, there was potentially only one relevant row of material on the entire A1 sized document.[35]In response, Mr McCarthy submitted that the Bowen case was entirely fact specific and as such did not provide any broader assistance. In his submission, the approach taken by Judge Brown was one which went through a document by document or page by page approach which was unnecessary and produced difficulty. In particular, the approach, of the litigator or advocate having to demonstrate the importance of the electronic document on essentially a column by column approach for each spreadsheet in order to establish the material as being PPE, did not work. It would involve a review of the data on an ex post facto approach and it could not cope properly with the electronic evidence before me. In particular, most columns that had N/A in the entries at the top of a column did not have that categorisation all the way through. For example, out of the 37 columns in the spreadsheet, only the last two had N/A throughout all of the pages of it. The other 35 columns had information to a greater or lesser extent which needed to be considered.[36]The quotation from the 2015 Crown Court Fee guidance set out in paragraph 15 above makes the comment that no account is to be taken of the number of lines in any particular page when considering it to be PPE. It does not say whether that comment relates to both paper and electronic PPE and, as is described above, there are differences of approach between the two. Nevertheless, in my view, it provides a timely reminder that documentation relied upon by the prosecution has never required it to have wall-to-wall information upon it for it to be regarded as PPE.[37]Indeed, it is also worth remembering that the purpose of the PPE calculation is to provide a view as to the weight of the case by reference to the documentation it has produced. If either too much or too little is allowed by way of PPE the economic balance is distorted in either direction. The LAA have repeatedly referred to the economic balance in their submissions, but it is clearly a two-way street. Ensuring that the public purse is expended appropriately must include refraining from under rewarding as well as over rewarding legal representatives. Cotter J’s comments in Meerbux about inappropriate expenditure were plainly aimed more at the larger concern of over rewarding lawyers but that is not the only concern.[38]There are obviously some situations where the determining officer has to decide whether or not they are satisfied about a particular subject. For example, whether the electronic evidence was sufficiently central to the case to be counted as PPE in the first place. I do not think that provision however is intended to turn upon its head the idea that the graduated fee scheme is intended to be a simple one to operate and not to be bogged down in requiring determining officers to assess the time spent in a manner redolent of an ex post facto taxation. My understanding is that the graduated fee schemes came in as a break from taxation of fees in criminal work precisely because of the time and effort and expense in such taxations. I note that even an experienced judge such as Judge Brown required two hearings and further information in order to come to a view in Bowen about exercising his discretion in that case.[39]It seems to me to be a tall order to expect determining officers without that degree of experience to be tasked with not only exercising their discretion but, inevitably, having to justify that to litigators and advocates in the written redetermination and written reasons process. My impression of the determining officers use of their discretion regarding images following the decision in Sereika is that they almost always allow the same 5% allowed by Judge Gordon-Saker. If that impression is correct, then it is no exercise of discretion in any meaningful sense.[40]The question of allowing images as PPE has been problematic from the off. Either they were sufficiently important to be allowed in full and in which case a very significant sum would be received by the solicitors or they would not be allowed at all. The way that mobile phones save pictures from incoming messages, website searches et cetera inevitably means that there are many, and indeed usually most, images which are entirely irrelevant to the case. In such circumstances, the use of rough and ready justice is better than no justice at all. In my view, Sereika is a useful tool in respect of the images category but should be confined to categories where material is largely irrelevant and it is a matter for the litigators and advocates to justify the proportion that is relevant.[41]In my judgment, the opposite is true in relation to the cell site data downloads that are at the heart of this appeal. They are produced by third parties whose choice of columns is presumably based on those which they consider to be useful. I was shown maps produced from those downloads (directly as I understand it by the computer). Those downloads are then served in their entirety upon the defendant. Again, it seems to me to be a reasonable presumption that the information is potentially relevant in any case.[42]I do not personally subscribe to the view that it is obvious which entries are relevant and are not relevant in any particular case. Whilst the Recorder of Leeds and Cotter J appeared to be comfortable that the relevant information was likely to be limited or easily searched for those relevant parts, my experience of hearing these appeals is that there is no end to the ingenuity of defendants in coming up with new defences and for which previously seemingly unimportant data may become vital. Purely by way of illustration in this case, the defendant’s defence was that his presence arose from him pretending to be a character for a YouTube video. Mr McCarthy said that it was the first time he had come across a fictitious defendant defence and I am sure he was right.[43]In my judgment therefore the information provided should be treated as being potentially relevant unless it can be demonstrated that it is not. In this context, it does not seem to me that even the phrase “N/A” can confidently be assumed to make the relevant column entry irrelevant in the manner of a blank page. There was a considerable amount of overlap in the LAA’s submissions, both oral and written, that an entry said to be not applicable could simply be treated as equivalent to a blank page. Proving negatives such as non-attribution of a phone is common in these cases. I think there is sufficient difference between the two for the line to be drawn at blank pages.[44]The phrase “no usable data” has been relied upon to suggest that, presumably something such as ‘not applicable’ is data that cannot be used. Whilst I am not convinced about that, I do not think that Cotter J was talking about such entries in any event. When Excel spreadsheets are converted into printed documents or their PDF equivalents, they regularly end up with a single column with one or two entries which have fallen off the page or pages before. To my mind, that is the sort of data which is not usable in itself for which remuneration would be no more appropriate than if the page were entirely blank.[45]I consider this to be a completely different exercise from seeking to remove some columns from many columns on a spreadsheet and then estimating what proportion of the page those columns represented in order to come to a ‘sensible approximation.’[46]From the foregoing paragraphs, it is clear that I depart from Judge Brown’s view of the extent to which the judgment of Cotter J in Meerbux informs the quantification of electronic evidence. In my view, Cotter J was dealing with the specific problem of claims for blank pages as PPE such as are produced when an Excel spreadsheet is converted into a PDF (or the print preview option is simply used.) In that context, pages are created which have odd pieces of data which have come adrift from the remainder of the spreadsheet in a way that would make that data unusable. No-one would criticise the determining officer in those circumstances disallowing the blank pages and, if necessary, estimating the extent of those pages rather than counting each one individually. That is the mischief dealt with by Cotter J in a case where he faced the binary decision of allowing all of the pages counted on the DCS or not.[47]As I have said above, the approach in Sereika is a useful tool for allowing some of the images where most will be irrelevant rather than being faced with the choice of allowing either all of the images or none of them. Requiring the litigator or advocate to explain why a particular percentage ought to come within the PPE is little different in principle, in my view, from justifying the importance of the electronic evidence to the case to allow it as PPE at all. The onus is on the litigator or advocate.[48]I do not, however, consider that these discrete aspects of assessing the PPE should herald a change in approach by determining officers so that they are wielding their discretion at every turn. I indicated to Mr Cohen during submissions, and indeed I have said to Mr Orde previously, the submissions over the last decade from the LAA regarding the graduated fee schemes are invariably that they are designed to be mechanistic so that they can be easily and speedily applied by the determining officers. As a result, stock phrases such as “swings and roundabouts” occur regularly in judgments and somewhat forlorn judicial comments are made that there is “no equity in the regulations.”[49]It seems to me that the LAA’s sudden desire for the determining officers to apply discretion to elements of their work which did not use to be the case, runs the risk of upsetting the regime as a whole in an attempt to deal with an issue which is not of the making of the LAA, the litigators or advocates; namely the change in the nature and quantity of prosecution material being served.[50]For these reasons, I consider that I have taken the public interest into account as required by Regulation 29. I find that the appropriate method of calculating PPE where ‘upscaling’ is required is to use the mathematically equivalent number of A4 pages where the evidence has been produced in a differently sized page. Furthermore, whilst blank pages will always be disallowed – estimated in number if necessary – the determining officer should refrain, at least where the data has originally been produced in PDF or similar form, from any additional manipulation of the data in arriving at the relevant number of pages.[51]As the appellant has been successful in this appeal, it is entitled to an award of costs as set out on the front page of this decision.

Cited in 1 later judgment