R v SHEROME WILLIAMS [2025] EWHC 2412 (SCCO)

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
SENIOR COURTS COSTS OFFICE
[2025] EWHC 2412 (SCCO)Case No Case No: 202302323 B3 SCCO Reference: SC-2025-CRI-000050Venue Thomas More Building, Royal Courts of Justice, London, WC2A 2LL
Between
RSHEROME WILLIAMSJudgment on Appeal under Regulation 29 of the Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013Appellant: Richard Christie KC
Before
SENIOR COSTS JUDGE ROWLEYDate 23 September 2025
[1]The appeal has been successful for the reasons set out below. The appropriate additional payment, to which should be added the sum of £1,500 (exclusive of VAT) for costs and the £100 paid on appeal, should accordingly be made to the Applicant. SENIOR COSTS JUDGE ROWLEY Senior Costs Judge Rowley: This is the appeal of Richard Christie KC against the sums allowed to him by the determining officer in the criminal appeals office under Schedule 3 of the Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013.[2]Counsel was instructed on behalf of Sherome Williams who faced offences of murder, causing grievous bodily harm with intent and possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life. The defendant was convicted at the Central Criminal Court and counsel was instructed to appeal both conviction and sentence. The defendant was given leave to appeal the conviction on limited grounds by a Single Judge and counsel pursued those grounds and sought permission to renew the appeal on other grounds as well as the appeal on sentence. Ultimately, all of the grounds of appeal were dismissed by the full court.[3]Counsel claimed 86 hours for the work involved on the appeals against conviction and sentence at an hourly rate of £287.50 together with attendance at the appeal claimed in the sum of £1,500 (all sums being exclusive of VAT). The determining officer stated that the number of hours worked has been agreed at 80 hours but that was not Mr Christie's position when he appeared before me on his appeal. For the reasons I set out below, I do not need to deal specifically with whether any agreement had been reached. I simply record that counsel considers there to be a further 11 hours or thereabouts to be paid for representing the claim for 66 emails as well as the attendance at court. One way or another, it is not the amount of time claimed by counsel that is really in dispute.[4]Indeed, the determining officer, in his written reasons, describes the challenges follows:
"This appeal is solely on the basis of the notional hourly rate that should be allowed for an agreed 80 hours work. Leading counsel claimed at £287.50 and I allowed at £200.00."
[5]Mr Greenhill, the determining officer, describes the requirements of the 2013 Regulations as requiring him to take into account all the relevant circumstances of the case including the nature, importance, complexity or difficulty of the work and the time involved and to allow a reasonable amount in respect of all work actually and reasonably done. He refers to the maximum fee payable to leading counsel and then says, quite understandably in this case, that that maximum sum would not provide a reasonable remuneration and on that basis he was entitled to allow such amounts as appear to him to be reasonable. He considered that the sum of £16,000 exclusive of VAT to be reasonable remuneration as opposed to the £26,225 claimed by counsel.[6]Mr Greenhill then records counsel's grounds of objection to the allowance of £200 "notional hourly rate" applied by Mr Greenhill on his determination as follows:
"The background to the case meant that the bad character materials were very extensive and the arguments at trial had to be presented in very short order because the Crown amended the application they had made a year before trial, during the trial. The grounds of appeal were particularly labour-intensive as a result and required a lot of further review of other authority and involved a novel point in respect of non—conviction ex post facto gang-related bad character. It also involved another case where the appellant had been investigated for murder and not charged and an ex post facto conviction for attempted murder as well as multiple other incidents (see the attached table). It also involved comparisons between rulings in two different trials by different very senior CCC judges as well as extensive liaison time with co-counsel who was arguing the points again for a second time during his re-trial as we prepared for this appeal. The appellant was also a juvenile at the time of the offence casting an extra burden upon counsel and making the arguments still more unusual."
[7]Mr Greenhill stated that he accepted all the factors raised but maintained that they were already reasonably reflected by the notional hourly rate he had allowed and, although this was a difficult case, it was not one of the most difficult and complex appeals dealt with by the Court of Appeal. He then went on to say:
"We discussed the notional hourly rate further in our telecom on 8 October. You pointed out and I accepted that Costs Judge Whalan had awarded you a notional hourly rate of £250 as long ago as 2019 which is why you had claimed a higher rate in this case. I explained that you accepted that the majority of leading counsel claims to and payments by this court offer a notional rate of £200 or less, one recent example being the very high-profile appeal of Lucy Letby, and that less than 1% of all our payments are appealed to a Costs Judge. I understood why you would consider a notional rate of £287.50 to be reasonable in light of what the Costs Judges have awarded in those very few cases that appeal to them. You understood that the notional rate of £200 allowed by me was in line with the fees paid by this Court to leading counsel in the majority of cases. You also considered that Leading Counsel for Lucy Letby had under claimed at a notional hourly rate of £200."
[8]The appropriateness of the "notional" hourly rate of £200 has now been discussed in numerous decisions of the Costs Judges. There appears to be little point in reiterating comments that have gone before in any detail. As Mr Greenhill's written reasons make clear, those previous Costs Judge decisions have not altered the rate allowed by the determining officers in the criminal appeals office. That might be surprising given that, without exception, it seems the Costs Judges have allowed a higher hourly rate on appeal. That may simply be the cases that have been appealed and the guidance given is very much that this is a case specific issue. But that does not sit very well with what is seemingly a standard hourly rate applied by Mr Greenhill regardless of the nature of the case. It is not, in my view, an attractive approach for a judge (or officer carrying out a quasi-judicial function) to be overturned on appeal and then not to seek to reflect those appellate views in future decisions. The fact that few advocates go to the time, trouble and expense of appealing a costs officer decision is not a reason to think that the rates invariably overturned on appeal are somehow validated.[9]It has been said before that the fact that many counsel claim a rate of £200 may be no more than an acknowledgement that such a rate is all that will be without an appeal. But it is not the job of the determining officer, or indeed a Costs Judge, to fix hourly rates whether in this appeal or elsewhere. The danger of doing so is obvious, particularly where the only source of funding is the State. There is no alternative source of funding for defendant practitioners in the great majority of cases.[10]Mr Christie expanded upon the difficulties and complexities of this case as described in the quotation at paragraph 6 above at the appeal hearing. For example, the question of the bad character application made by the prosecution reveals the weight of this case. The defendant was 16 at the time of the events which formed the basis of the prosecution. He was 21 by the time he was actually prosecuted because, as with his co-accused, they were not prosecuted at the same time as the other three people who were said to have been in the back of the car which was involved in the attack on the victim.[11]In the five years between the events and the prosecution, the defendant had been caught up in various violent incidents. Most of these had not resulted in a prosecution and so were still potentially "live". The defendant had been convicted of attempted murder when he was 18 and so was in prison by the time of his trial in these proceedings. The bad character on which the prosecution wish to rely was therefore almost entirely concerned with events which occurred after the incidents in this case. Many of those events involved matters about which, when cross-examined, the defendant was in danger of incriminating himself in other proceedings. The complexities of this situation are obvious and are only described in outline by this description of them.[12]They are the sort of factors expected by the Taxation Officer's Notes for Guidance to be considered when looking at all the circumstances to reach a conclusion about what is reasonable remuneration. Comparison with other cases is not a relevant circumstance. I do not suggest that Mr Thornhill really took into account the sums allowed in respect of the appeal of Lucy Letby because I have little doubt that he would have allowed his notional hourly rate in any event. But to the extent that determining officers do directly compare cases in this fashion, then I would deprecate them doing so.[13]In my judgment, the standard hourly rate allowed by Mr Greenhill does not sufficiently value the weight of this case or indeed the expertise of counsel. Whilst it is easy to produce a figure as the product of a reasonable number of hours multiplied by a specific hourly rate, that is not strictly the task of establishing reasonable remuneration. Having weighed the various complexities of this case, I take the view that £25,000 plus VAT represents reasonable remuneration rather than the sum allowed by the determining officer. (That sum is roughly represented by allowing 90 hours at £275 per hour.)[14]It follows therefore that counsel has been successful in his appeal and he is also entitled to a contribution to his costs of having to bring it.

Cited in 3 later judgments