On 17th July 2026, Annabel Hazlitt appeared in the Court of Appeal, successful in appealing a sentence imposed in the Crown Court sitting at Winchester as wrong in principle.
The appeal raised a short point about whether the Appellant should have received full credit of one third for his guilty pleas rather than the 25% allowed below. On 13th October 2025, Mr Frost pleaded guilty to Count 1, False Imprisonment, and Count 3, Common Assault. Count 2, Affray, was left to lie on the file. On 26th March 2026 Mr Recorder Onslow sentenced him to three years, four months and two weeks’ imprisonment (40 months and two weeks) on Count 1, with a concurrent term of four months on Count 3, and made a restraining order which was not the subject of the appeal.
The procedural history was central to the appeal, as to whether the Appellant was entitled to 1/3 credit for his guilty pleas. No pleas were entered at the Magistrates’ Court, and a widely shared comment on the Digital Case System before the PTPH from Ms Hazlitt, who represented Mr Frost below and on appeal, recorded that fitness to plead was a preliminary issue and that an appointment had been booked. It was only after receipt of the psychiatric report, dealing both with fitness and Mr Frost’s mental state at the time of the offence, was received by Mr Frost’s solicitors that he entered acceptable Guilty Pleas.
At sentence, the Recorder declined to give Mr Frost 1/3 credit, instead limiting it to 25%. The single ground of appeal was that the Recorder was wrong in principle to limit credit to 25 per cent. The Court held that any doubt as to what occurred in the magistrates’ court should be resolved in the appellant’s favour, and that it was beyond doubt that his solicitors had instructed a psychiatrist well before the plea and trial preparation hearing. The Court set out section D of the Sentencing Council’s overarching guideline on reduction in sentence for a guilty plea, under which a plea indicated at the first stage of proceedings attracts a reduction of one third and the maximum thereafter is one quarter, and the exception at paragraph F1, which preserves the one third reduction where particular circumstances significantly reduced the Defendant’s ability to understand what was alleged or otherwise made it unreasonable to expect an earlier indication of plea. The Court found that Mr Frost was suffering from a psychotic episode at the time of the offending, apparent from the Complainant’s evidence and his presentation on arrest, that it was essential for his solicitors to investigate his fitness to plead. Further, it found that it was not reasonable to expect pleas to be entered while those investigations were ongoing and before his legal advisers could take instructions and advise him, and that once fitness was confirmed by expert evidence the pleas were entered at the first available opportunity. The Recorder’s restriction of credit to 25 per cent was therefore an error of principle. Applying a one third reduction to the unchallenged sentence of 54 months after trial produced three years (36 months).
The court quashed the sentence of 40.5 months and substituted a term of three years’ imprisonment, all other orders remaining the same, and to that extent the appeal was allowed.
The full judgment is reported here: R v Frost [2026] EWCA Crim 1042
