Held, applications dismissed. (1) The jurisdiction and powers of the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) (“the CACD”) were entirely statutory. The Criminal Appeal Act 1968 set out the respective powers and roles of the Registrar, the single judge and the full court. Under the 1968 Act there were no circumstances in which the Registrar had a power to determine the substantive merits of an application for leave to appeal. As to determining the merits of an application to reopen a decision of the CACD, the CACD had the inherent power, as with other courts, to revise any order before it was recorded in the relevant record of the court. That aside, the general rule was that when the decision of the court had been recorded in the relevant records, there was no jurisdiction to reopen the appeal and the order was final. However, the CACD had jurisdiction to reopen concluded proceedings (i) in cases of nullity, (ii) in cases of clear undisputed procedural error where there was no alternative effective remedy, and (iii) in exceptional circumstances where the lack of an alternative effective remedy, or some other reason, might lead the court to reopen a decision in order to avoid manifest unfairness. Where an application was made to reopen the determination of an appeal, Crim PR r 36.15(1) clearly contemplated two separate situations: first, when a party wanted the court to reopen a decision, and, second, when the Registrar referred a decision for the court to consider reopening it. The Registrar could not decline to refer applications she considered unmeritorious: if the procedural requirements were met in the present context the Registrar had to refer the application to the court. In the particular context of rule 36.15, “court” meant the full court. It followed that such applications should be sent by the Registrar straight to the full court (constituted of three judges), where they would be resolved on paper, without a hearing, unless the court ordered otherwise, it being for the court to decide upon the procedure it wished to adopt (paras 18, 25, 28, 31, 32, 35–43).

(2) An application to reopen an appeal under Crim PR r 36.15 fell within the scope of section 29 of the 1968 Act so that, pursuant to section 29(2), the court was empowered to direct that time spent in custody should not count towards sentence. Accordingly, when an applicant sought to reopen an appeal decision, he should be warned in suitably neutral terms as part of the communications from the Registrar that totally unmeritorious applications might result in an adverse order of that kind. In future the court would investigate whether an application to reopen was totally unmeritorious and if it was, consideration would be given to a loss of time order or an order for costs (paras 45–48).

(3) The two applications in the present case failed to satisfy the criteria for reopening a decision. In the case of the first applicant, the submission that the position the single judge rendered the proceedings a nullity was quite without merit. Section 56(2) of the Senior Courts Act 1981 was directed not at the court building but at the tribunal that dealt with the case. Since he had not presided over the proceedings resulting in the applicant’s conviction or sentence, nor had he been a member of that court in some other way, his regular sittings at the relevant Crown Court were irrelevant. In the circumstances, given that the applications did not come within the criteria of procedural errors that were clear and undisputed when there was no alternative effective remedy, and since they did not arguably reveal any other exceptional basis for re-opening an earlier decision of this court, it was not necessary to consider the suggested underlying merits of the various submissions (paras 49–54).