Court of Appeal Criminal Division Reporting

Structure and who sits

The Court of Appeal Criminal Division (CACD) hears appeals from the Crown Court. It sits under the Lord or Lady Chief Justice, or the Vice-President of the Criminal Division, and its members are Lord and Lady Justices of Appeal together with High Court judges (and, occasionally, senior Circuit Judges) sitting by invitation. Most sittings are at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, though the court can and does sit elsewhere.

A full appeal — against conviction or sentence — is normally heard by three judges. Applications for permission to appeal are usually decided first by a single judge, working from the papers without a hearing; a refusal can be renewed before the full court.

The two main routes into the Court of Appeal

• Conviction appeal (defendant): Under s.1 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968, a person convicted on indictment can appeal against conviction. The court must allow the appeal if it thinks the conviction is unsafe — because of a wrong decision on a question of law, a material irregularity in the trial, or (commonly) fresh evidence not available at trial. Sentence appeals proceed on a parallel but separate route.
• Attorney General's Reference (unduly lenient sentence): Under s.36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, the Attorney General (or Solicitor General) can refer a Crown Court sentence they consider unduly lenient to the CACD, for offences within the scheme. The reference must be made within 28 days of sentence — an absolute time limit with no power to extend. The court will only increase a sentence if it falls outside the range a judge could reasonably have considered appropriate; it is not enough that the appellate judges would simply have passed a longer sentence themselves.

A third, less common route is a referral by the Criminal Cases Review Commission under s.9 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995, typically in potential miscarriage-of-justice cases where new evidence or argument has emerged since the original appeal (if any) was exhausted.

Getting the terminology right

Open justice and rare reporting restrictions

CACD hearings are public, and reporting restrictions at this stage are rare — the open-justice presumption is strong, and the court will only restrict publication where there is a specific, identified risk that cannot be managed another way (for example national security material, or the identity of a protected witness carried over from the trial below).

Where the court quashes a conviction and orders a retrial, a postponement order restricting reporting of the appeal judgment until the retrial concludes is possible — but, as with any s.4(2) order, it must be narrowly targeted at a specific risk and is open to media challenge.

Finding and citing CACD judgments

• ›Neutral citation format: [year] EWCA Crim [number] — for example [2024] EWCA Crim 512. Always include it so readers and other outlets can find the judgment.
• ›The National Archives' Find Case Law service (caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk) is now the primary official repository for recent judgments, alongside the long-established BAILII archive (bailii.org).
• ›The judiciary's own website (judiciary.uk/judgments) publishes selected sentencing remarks and judgments of wide public interest, often faster than the full case-law databases.
• ›The CPS publishes guidance on the appeals process, including how unduly lenient sentence references work in practice, at cps.gov.uk.
• ›For a pending or very recent case, the court list at the Royal Courts of Justice (via HMCTS) is the fastest way to confirm listing and outcome before judgment is formally published.

Pre-publication checklist

• I have correctly identified which route this is — defendant's conviction/sentence appeal, or an Attorney General's Reference — and used the right terminology.
• I have not described a single-judge refusal of permission as a full-court decision on the merits.
• I have accurately described the outcome: quashed, substituted, increased, reduced, or upheld.
• Where a retrial has been ordered, I have treated the case as newly active for contempt purposes.
• I have included the neutral citation ([year] EWCA Crim [number]) where the judgment is available.
• I have checked whether any narrowly targeted reporting restriction has been made in this specific case.

Attorney General's References in practice

Only certain offences qualify for the unduly lenient sentence scheme — broadly, indictable-only offences and a specified list of either-way offences. The scheme has grown considerably busier since it was introduced after public concern over the sentencing of the Ealing Vicarage rapists in 1988: annual requests to the Attorney General's Office numbered in the low hundreds two decades ago and now regularly exceed a thousand.

Anyone — not just the prosecution or the victim — can ask the Attorney General's Office to consider a case, but the 28-day clock from the date of sentence runs regardless of when the request is made, so flag potentially qualifying cases to your newsdesk and to interested parties promptly if you think a sentence looks unusually low.

Related guides

Frequently asked questions