Held, appeal allowed. The clear purpose of section 111(4) of the Magistrates’ Court Act 1980 was to impose a choice on a party to any proceeding before a magistrates’ court, or who was aggrieved by a conviction, order, determination or other proceeding of the court, either to appeal to the Crown Court for a rehearing on questions of fact and law, or to the High Court on questions of law or jurisdiction. Accordingly, while section 111(1) permitted an “application” to be made to the High Court by any party or person aggrieved about a “proceeding” of a magistrates’ court, on the ground that the proceeding was wrong in law or was in excess of jurisdiction, the effect of section 111(4) was that on the making of such an application any right of the applicant to appeal against the decision to the Crown Court was to cease. The “applicant” for the purposes of section 111(4) was clearly the party or person aggrieved who had made the application under section 111(1) and it was that applicant who lost any right to appeal against the decision to the Crown Court which they might have had. Accordingly, the application by the prosecutor to state a case, and the subsequent direction of the Divisional Court to convict the defendant, did not extinguish the defendant’s own right of appeal under section 108 of the 1980 Act in relation to that conviction, and the Crown Court had been wrong to conclude otherwise. Nor would the pursuit of such an appeal inevitably be an abuse by reason of inviting the Crown Court to contradict the decision of the Divisional Court. In that regard, the Divisional Court in the present case had ruled on the questions of law on which its opinion was sought assuming the facts to be as set out in the case stated for the purposes of that appeal and, on the basis of those facts, had considered that the only rational conclusion the magistrate’s court could have reached was that the appellant was guilty of the section 68 offence. However, the Divisional Court had not itself made any findings of fact. By contrast, if the defendant pursued an appeal against conviction to the Crown Court, it would be a rehearing, on which the Crown Court might come to a different conclusion on the facts, while remaining bound as a matter of precedent by any points of law decided by the Divisional Court. Accordingly, no question of contradiction arose. The matter would therefore be remitted to the Crown Court for the appeal against conviction to be listed (paras 42, 44, 45, 47, 50, 56, 57).

Per curiam. It would have made no different to the foregoing conclusion had the Divisional Court instead substituted a conviction for the acquittal and remitted the sentence only to the magistrates’ court (paras 54, 56).