R v Ramela Gordon

Neutral Citation No. [2025] EWHC 1583 (SCCO) IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE SENIOR COURTS COSTS OFFICE Case No: T20207235 SCCO Reference: SC-2024-CRI-000123 Thomas More Building Royal Courts of Justice London, WC2A 2LL Date: 24 June 2025 Before: SENIOR COSTS JUDGE ROWLEY R v RAMELA GORDON Judgment on Appeal under Regulation 29 of the Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013 Appellant: SJ 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 £750 (exclusive of VAT) for costs and the £100 paid on appeal, should accordingly be made to the Applicant. SENIOR COSTS JUDGE ROWLEY COSTS JUDGE ROWLEY Approved Judgment Senior Costs Judge Rowley: R v Gordon 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. This is the appeal of SJ Law solicitors against the number of pages of prosecution evidence (“PPE”) allowed by the determining officer when calculating the solicitors’ graduated fee under the Criminal Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013, as amended. The solicitors were instructed on behalf of Ramela Gordon who faced an indictment concerning drugs offences and possession of a firearm and ammunition. When claiming their graduated fee, the solicitors claimed the maximum 10,000 PPE but were only allowed 4.350 pages by the determining officer. The difference between the solicitors and the determining officer relates to the manner in which the prosecution evidence was provided. There is no issue about the evidence having been served or its importance to the case so that it should be treated as PPE in accordance with paragraph 1(2)-(5) of Schedule 1 to the 2013 Regulations. Some of the exhibits were served electronically in a document that would mimic an A1 sized page. Most of them however, were served on an A4 sized format but with data which, according to the solicitors, can only be viewed if it is multiplied by either 200% or 400% on screen. The case law referred to by both the solicitors and the submissions of the Legal Aid Agency on this appeal relates to what is described as “upscaling.” This term refers to the first situation described in the previous paragraph i.e. that the electronic document is formatted to be the equivalent of a larger sized paper document that an A4 page. As far as I am aware the reverse situation of an A4 page being involved but with data using a very small font has not been considered. Certainly none of the previous cases referred to describe this situation. Consequently, it is possible that this decision is breaking new ground. However, in common with the parties, in my view, this situation is essentially the same as the more common upscaling issue and is almost literally looking at the data from the other end of a telescope. Having heard Colin Wells of counsel for the solicitor appellants and Jonathan Orde of the LAA, I found myself hearing a very similar appeal in a case called R v Mpanzu. In particular there was a further exposition of the LAA’s argument based on the case of the Lord Chancellor v Lam and Meerbux and its application by Costs Judge Brown in the case of R v Bowen. I have set out my conclusions in respect of the LAA’s argument, and my reasons for so doing, in the case of Mpanzu [2025] EWHC 1582 (SCCO) and it is not necessary to set the reasoning out here as well. In short, I have taken the view that the guidance of Cotter J in Meerbux does not apply to this situation. Consequently the so-called mechanistic approach should apply. Also, in line with Mpanzu, I consider that the determining officer ought to have allowed eight times the number of pages served in A1 rather than the four which he says appeared reasonable. The reasoning for this is simply that an A1 sized page is 8 COSTS JUDGE ROWLEY Approved Judgment R v Gordon times the size of an A4 page and it is A4 pages which underpin the calculation of PPE. 10. The issue here, which was not dealt with in Mpanzu, concerns whether or not the same sort of approach should apply where the data that has been fitted into an A4 page but which is not legible unless it is magnified considerably. The determining officer sets out his position as follows: “In relation to the upscaling of material we are only able to base this on page size. Whereby if material is served on a page format larger than that of A4 we will allow for reasonable upscaling based on the size of document and the amount of data contained. We are unable to allow any upscaling based on the font size as this would result in an overinflated page count being attributed to the material. We have to base our assessment in terms of reasonableness, and it is our view in applying upscaling based on font size would not meet the criteria. In applying upscaling based on font size this would result in the data becoming disjointed and not representative of the amount of data that is contained within the document the material has been served on pages of A4 therefore we would only consider the original page count that has been given to the material we believe that increasing the page count by 400% and 200% of 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. I consider that the above assessment represents a reasonable exercise of discretion with the upscaling that has been applied representing a fair reflection of the page count that should be attributed to the material in applying this upscaling, it makes the material easier to read and offers a fair representation of the data.” 11. 12. I have already indicated, via my telescope reference, that I consider the same approach ought to apply to documents where the data is populated so minutely that it cannot be read without magnification as to documents which have been created in a much bigger size to allow it to fit in far more data than could be accommodated in an A4 page. In both circumstances, the page count reflective of legible A4 documents is suppressed so that the page count is artificially lowered. I do not accept therefore the determining officer’s justification in the middle paragraph of the three set out above. It is, it seems to me, at odds with the essence of the comments in the first and third paragraphs. The crux of the issue is the amount of data contained (the justification for upscaling where A1 etc documents are involved) and the material needs to be easier to read (than it is in the A4 with minute data). COSTS JUDGE ROWLEY Approved Judgment R v Gordon 13. Where an A4 document needs to be magnified by 200% or 400% it appears to justify treating it as two or four A4 pages, rather than one, respectively. I can see that there is room for dispute as to the extent of the magnification required, although having had the opportunity to carry out this exercise on some of the documents in the appeal, the difference between, e.g. 200% and 400% is pretty stark. Furthermore, the percentage increase will need to be in multiples of 100 realistically in order to calculate the appropriate page count and that limitation ought to mean that disputes are relatively rare. The guiding principle, in my view, is that the magnification ought to put the document, if printed out, at a “normal” font size of 11 or 12. 14. For these reasons, the appeal succeeds and I direct the determining officer to recalculate the appropriate PPE accordingly. Since the appeal has succeeded, the solicitors are entitled to their costs of the appeal.