AC-2025-LON-003228 - [2025] EWHC 2569 (Admin)

I am also satisfied, in the end, that nothing turns on Counsel’s disagreement on another legal point. It concerns the Judge’s analysis of the position on the morning of 22 September 2025, when the Claimant in this case stepped into the dock prior to being rearraigned. It is clear from the composite note that in the afternoon the Judge expressed this view: “He said that, in his view as at 10.26 this morning, Mr Freckleton had surrendered to the custody of the court and was not on bail”. Ms Millar says that is exactly right as a matter of law. Mr Kherbane hotly disputes that proposition. He says that surrender does not mean that the defendant is then in the “custody of the court”. It is fair to say that neither Counsel have showed me any passage or commentary which directly supports them on that point of disagreement. I also record that Mr Kherbane does not accept that the “view” that the Judge was expressing in the afternoon on the surrender point was a view that the Judge had necessarily held earlier in the day.