202403291 B4 - [2025] EWCA Crim 1135

The criminal proceedings:

The appellant was not charged until November 2022, nearly three years after her arrest. She pleaded not guilty to both charges, and a trial date was fixed for November 2023. The defence indicated an intention to adduce expert evidence, and directions were given for the service of that evidence, and of any expert evidence which the prosecution wished to adduce in response. In the event, no defence report was served. In the meantime, however, the prosecution had instructed an expert witness, Dr Bunn, whose report was served on 5 October 2023. The defence sought disclosure of medical records and other material to which Dr Bunn’s report referred. There was delay, as a result of which the November 2023 trial date had to be vacated.

The prosecution provided disclosure of the medical evidence by way of a hyperlinked list, which we understand corresponded to the list of medical evidence identified by Dr Bunn in her report.

Dr Bunn had been provided with a bundle of witness statements. In her report she referred to a chronology, which she set out in an appendix. The first entry related to an outpatient consultation with a speech and language therapist on 6 September 2017, when C was aged 7 months; the last was a doctor’s letter dated 1 March 2022. Dr Bunn stated that she had “extracted information from the medical records that I felt was less well represented in the witness statements”.

The trial, in the Crown Court at Woolwich before HH Judge Jonathan Mann KC and a jury, was heard in August 2024. It lasted for four weeks.