Our client is charged with two counts of conspiracy to supply a controlled drug of class B, namely mephedrone. He first appeared before the Magistrates earlier this year, was remanded into custody and sent to the Crown Court for trial.

When a person in custody is sent by the Magistrates’ Court to the Crown Court for trial, the law states that the trial must take place within 112 days of the committal. This time limit is known as the custody time limit, or CTL.

If the trial will not take place within the CTL, then the Prosecution must apply for an extension of the custody time limits in accordance with the relevant statutory provisions. In order to be successful in their application, they must prove two things:

• That there is a good and sufficient cause to extend the CTL; and
• That they have acted with all due diligence and expedition.

In this case, the prosecution had to apply to extend the CTL because, owing to extraordinary difficulties in obtaining legal aid and shortcomings by the prosecution with regards to disclosure, we had to apply to break the original trial date. As a result, the new trial date was listed to take place past the expiration of the CTL.

The basis of the Crown’s application was that there was a good and sufficient cause, namely that we had applied to break the trial fixture and that they had acted with all due diligence and expedition.

We opposed both of those assertions. It was our submission that there was no good and sufficient cause because, although we had applied to break the trial fixture, we had only done so because we had not been able to obtain legal aid for our client. The inability to obtain legal aid was not our fault, nor could our client be blamed. We argued that the LAA had made a material error whilst processing the application, which had caused the delay. Secondly, we argued that the Prosecution had not acted with all due diligence and expedition as they had not properly completed secondary disclosure.

It is fair to say that the argument as to whether or not difficulties in securing legal aid can amount to good and sufficient cause has never been argued before, and this case may be of interest to practitioners, given the increasing frequency of delays caused by LAA errors in the current climate of austerity.

In an interesting judgment, the judge stated that although difficulties in securing legal aid will not always amount to good and sufficient cause, on the particular facts of this case it did, and the Prosecution’s application was successful. The custody time limits were therefore extended until our client’s trial later this year.

This case raised a novel point of law, which we are looking into taking further by way of a judicial review.

Penny Muir has conduct of the case, assisted by Daniel Jones. The excellent Simon Molyneux of Carmelite Chambers is instructed as counsel.