Court of Appeal cannot grant representation order covering application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission

15/11/22

In R v Tredget, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (“the CCRC”) referred a number of the Appellant’s historic convictions to the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) in October 2019 pursuant to section 9 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995. In its substantive judgment on the appeal handed down on 8 February 2022 (reported at [2022] 4 WLR 62), the Court allowed the appeal in part and quashed certain of the Appellant’s convictions, but otherwise dismissed the appeal. For that hearing, the Appellant was granted legal aid by the Court of Appeal under a representation order which covered his legal representatives’ work since the date of the CCRC’s reference of the case to the Court of Appeal.

At the conclusion of the appeal hearing, the Appellant applied to extend the representation order to cover all work since October 2010 in connection with his application to the CCRC for a reference of the case to the Court of Appeal. The Lord Chancellor was invited to intervene in that application, and did so, and the application was listed for a hearing before the full Court (Holroyde LJ (VP), Griffiths and Foster JJ).

In giving the judgment of the Court yesterday, Lord Justice Holroyde held that the Court’s jurisdiction to grant legal aid was purely statutory and that it had no jurisdiction under reg.8 of the Criminal Legal Aid (Determinations by a Court and Choice of Representative) Regulations 2013 to make a representation covering work done before the date of the CCRC’s reference of the case to the Court of Appeal. The Court’s jurisdiction to make a representation order was limited to proceedings before it, or before the Supreme Court on appeal from it. Work in connection with an application to the CCRC was not for the purposes of proceedings before the Court of Appeal, which were initiated by the CCRC’s reference.

The Court therefore dismissed the application.