R v Oates [2026] EWHC 1434 (SCCO)

Neutral Citation No.[2026] EWHC 1434 (SCCOCase No 06VV0010722SCCO Reference: SC-2026-CRI-000002
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
SENIOR COURTS COSTS OFFICE
Thomas More Building
Venue Royal Courts of JusticeDate 11 June 2026
London, WC2A 2LL
Before
COSTS JUDGE LEONARDRvOATESJudgment on Appeal under Regulation 29 of the Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013Appellant: MORTONS SOLICITORS LTDThe appeal has been successful (in part) for the reasons set out below.The appropriate additional payment should accordingly be made to the Applicant. The issue of costs is reserved to a further decision, should the parties require it.COSTS JUDGE LEONARD
Between
OatesDefendantRCrown
[1]This appeal concerns payment to defence solicitors, pursuant to the Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013, under the provisions of the Litigators’ Graduated Fee Scheme set out at Schedule 2. The Representation Order was made on 5 September 2024 and the 2013 Regulations apply as in effect on that date. The Appellant has requested a short extension of time for the appeal, which is granted.[2]A fee is due to the Appellant for each case undertaken by the Appellant. Paragraph 1 of Schedule 2 defines a case, for present purposes, as:
“… proceedings in the Crown Court against any one assisted person… on one or more counts of a single indictment…”
[3]The fee due for each case is calculated, along with other factors, by reference to the number of served Pages of Crown Evidence (“PPE”). The issue on this appeal is the appropriate PPE count.[4]The relevant provisions of Schedule 2 for calculating the PPE count are at paragraph 1, subsections (2)-(5), which explain how, for payment purposes, the number of pages of PPE is to be calculated: “(2) For the purposes of this Schedule, the number of pages of Crown evidence served on the court must be determined in accordance with sub-paragraphs (3) to (5). (3) The number of pages of Crown 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 Crown documents or which are included in any notice of additional evidence. (4) Subject to sub-paragraph (5), a document served by the Crown in electronic form is included in the number of pages of Crown evidence.

(b) has never existed in paper form,

[5]For the purposes of this appeal, I also need to refer to paragraph 20 of Schedule 2, which allows for a “special preparation” claim to be made for electronic evidence excluded from the PPE count:
“(1) This paragraph applies in any case on indictment in the Crown Court…where a documentary or pictorial exhibit is served by the Crown in electronic form and— (i) the exhibit has never existed in paper form; and (ii) the appropriate officer does not consider it appropriate to include the exhibit in the pages of Crown evidence… (2) Where this paragraph applies, a special preparation fee may be paid… calculated from the number of hours which the appropriate officer considers reasonable… to view the Crown evidence… using the rates specified in the table following paragraph 27…”

Authorities on the Inclusion of Electronic Evidence Within the PPE

[6]By virtue of paragraph 1(5) of Schedule 2 to the 2013 Regulations, served electronic evidence which has never existed in paper form may be included in the PPE count if the Determining Officer considers that appropriate.[7]In Lord Chancellor v SVS Solicitors [2017] EWHC 1045 (QB) Holroyde J (as he then was) gave guidance as to how that discretion should be exercised. At paragraph 50(viii) of his judgment he identified the key criterion: whether the evidence was of central importance to the trial (and not merely helpful or even important to the defence).[8]In Lord Chancellor v Edward Hayes LLP & Anor [2017] EWHC 138 (QB) Mrs Justice Nicola Davies DBE (as she then was) concluded that, given the importance to the Crown in that particular case of text messages, it was incumbent upon the defence team to look at all the underlying data from which the Crown had extracted samples upon which it relied. The defence needed to test the veracity of text messages, to assess the context in which they were sent, to extrapolate any data that was relevant to the messages relied on by the Crown, and to check the accuracy of the data finally relied on by the Crown. The underlying data should accordingly (although never formally served) be included within the PPE count.[9]Hayes indicates that where key Crown evidence is extracted from a particular category of electronic data, one would generally expect all of the electronic evidence in that category (in Hayes, messaging data) to be included within the PPE count.[10]Every case will however (as Holroyde J observed in Lord Chancellor v SVS)turn on its own facts. Where, for example, mobile phone downloads contain large numbers of images, only a small proportion of which are relevant, Cost Judges have, in decisions such as R v Sereika (SCCO 168/13, 12 December 2018), taken the pragmatic approach, of allowing an appropriate percentage of the full body of image data. That approach was approved by Cotter J in The Lord Chancellor v Lam & Meerbux Solicitors [2023] EWHC 1186 (KB) and Bourne J in Lord Chancellor v IMS Law [2025] EWHC 2018 (KB).[11]It may of course be necessary for a defence team to work through and analyse a large volume of electronic evidence which does not merit inclusion within the PPE count, but any claim for payment for such work should be made under paragraph 20 of schedule 2 (special preparation).

The Background

[12]The Appellant represented Christopher Oates (“the Defendant”) in proceedings before the Crown Court at Manchester. In 2025, following an investigation by police into historic child sexual exploitation offences committed in the early 2000s (including the activities of grooming gangs) the Defendant faced trial on three counts of sexual activity with a child, two of causing or inciting child prostitution, one count of possession of a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence, and one count of causing or inciting prostitution for gain.[13]On the fourth day of trial, the Defendant pleaded guilty to causing child prostitution, causing prostitution for gain, and possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence. He also asked for an offence of sexual activity with a child to be taken into consideration.[14]On 26 June 2025, the Defendant was sentenced to 13 years and one month’s imprisonment. The sentence took into account a separate case involving offences committed in 2023 of making and taking indecent images of children, attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child, drug offences and possessing false documents with improper intent.[15]In February 2025, the Prosecution had made a Bad Character application under section 101(1)(d) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (evidence relevant to an important matter in issue between the defendant and the prosecution). The application referred to the cross-admissibility of the evidence against the defendant in relation to offences against two different children; to his guilty pleas to relevant sexual offences; to past convictions showing a propensity to use threats and violence; and to his use of false identities.[16]The application also referred to the contents of several electronic devices belonging to the Defendant, including an iPhone referred to as exhibit AO/6. An analysis of the phone’s contents revealed imagery indicative of drug use and involvement in the supply of drugs, particularly cannabis; multiple emails with photographs attached of large amounts of cannabis; similar photographic images saved upon the phone; messaging records indicating involvement in wider drug supply and associated gang-related activity; and a user account and a bank account under the same false name.[17]On 14 February 2025 His Honour Judge Nicholls ordered the disclosure of a download report from the Defendant’s iPhone to the defence solicitors. The CPS offered inspection facilities and supplied a copy of the download report to the Defence’s instructed expert.[18]The download report comprised a total of 6,109 pages. The Appellant submitted a claim to the Legal Aid Agency’s Determining Officer on the basis that 5,590 of those pages (91.5%) should be included within the PPE count. This included the entirety of the data files (video, pictorial, audio, documentary etc) in the download report, comprising some 5,180 pages.[19]Having reviewed the download report, the Legal Aid Agency’s Determining Officer assessed the PPE count at 2,001, including 224 pages from the download report. These comprised call logs (9 pages), chats (109 pages), contacts (19 pages), instant messages (31 pages) and 5% of a total of 1,113 pages of images, rounded up to 56 pages.

Conclusions

[20]I bear in mind that it is incumbent upon the Appellant to demonstrate that it is appropriate for me to allow higher PPE count, for the purposes of calculating the fee due to the Appellant, than has the Determining Officer.[21]I have not seen the download report in issue, although I have seen a useful review summary incorporating data relied upon by the Prosecution.[22]Telephone download reports produced for the purposes of criminal cases are usually (as was evidently the case here) divided into separate categories such as contact, messaging and image data. In such cases the appropriate approach (as approved by Cotter J in The Lord Chancellor v Lam & Meerbux Solicitors and by Bourne J in Lord Chancellor v IMS Law) is first to identify those categories of data that merit inclusion within the PPE count and second, in respect of each of those categories of data, to identify an appropriate PPE count on the facts of the case. Many sections, such as large bodies of metadata, can usually be seen at a glance to have no evidential value and so can be entirely discounted.[23]The Appellant accepts that not all of the download report was of sufficient relevance to merit inclusion in the PPE count, but offers no basis for understanding why it is said that more than 91% of the report’s contents should be included. Most telephone download reports contain huge quantities of irrelevant data and this case does not appear to have been an exception. The review summary and the Bad Character application demonstrate how little of the report’s content was actually relied upon by the Prosecution.[24]The Determining Officer has adopted the approach endorsed by Cotter J and Bourne J, by identifying those categories of data which in her view should be included in the PPE count. She has allowed every page of each such category except for images, as to which (again in accordance with established authority) she has allowed what in her view was an appropriate percentage.[25]It is not possible to fault this approach. Nor would I take disagree with the percentage of images allowed by the Determining Officer. The review summary to which I have referred confirms that there were 16,251 images on the Defendant’s iPhone, of which 120 depicted either cannabis plants or young children. At (on the figures I have) about 14 images to a page, that would comprise about 8.5 pages. The remainder would have (as ever) included a great deal of irrelevant material such as application icons, which could have been scrolled through at speed.[26]On that basis a 5% allowance of 56 pages seems to me to be entirely fair.[27]I would only take issue with the exclusion by the Determining Officer of categories of data of which extracts were expressly referred to in the Bad Character application of February 2025. These comprise 184 pages of emails, 2 pages of user account information and 4 pages of document files. I include the emails because emails with attached pictures of cannabis were referred to in the application; user account information, because the application referred to a false user account; and document files, because the Bad Character application referred to a bank account in that false name, from which one page was reproduced in the review summary.[28]On that basis, I can allow a further 190 pages of PPE. The appeal succeeds to that extent.[29]I am given to understand that that it would not be appropriate for me to make any award of costs of this appeal until the parties have had the opportunity to consider its outcome. I can if requested give directions for any further submissions the parties may wish to make in that respect.