The Solicitor General has apologised but Bristol’s top judge has refused to allow a review
16:30, 14 Oct 2025Updated 17:12, 14 Oct 2025
James Kelvin arriving at Bristol Crown Court in June(Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach PLC)
The Solicitor General has apologised to relatives of a victim of a child sex offender, after a series of errors in the way he was sentenced meant he was not given as long a jail term as he could have been. The apology from Ellie Reeves MP came before a hearing at Bristol Crown Court, in which the judge who presided over the errors acknowledged mistakes were made, but declined to allow a review that could have seen them rectified.
That has left the victim’s mother – who was the one to point out the mistakes and appealed to the Attorney General – saying she is ‘absolutely livid’ and furious at the decision by the leading judge in the South West, the Honorary Recorder of Bristol, Peter Blair KC.
The saga began when James Kelvin was brought to Bristol Crown Court at two hearings earlier this year, charged with a series of child sex offences. Bristol Live reported in June that the 51-year-old had pleaded guilty to making hundreds of indecent images of children, including dozens of the most serious kind, over a period of two years, while he lived in Bristol.
Kelvin had earlier pleaded guilty to other charges, including two of making indecent ‘pseudo images’ of children, of which two were in the most serious ‘Category A’ images, and three in ‘Category B’. Kelvin, who lived in Bristol at the time but had moved to Goldsithney in Cornwall by the time he was eventually jailed, also pleaded guilty to one count of voyeurism against a girl under the age of 18.
He appeared again at Bristol Crown Court in August and Judge Peter Blair took the relatively unusual step of deciding he should serve the jail terms given for each group of offences consecutively. That meant Kelvin was ultimately sentenced to a total of three years and three months in jail, but had 13 months taken off because he had pleaded guilty.
But at a new hearing today, Tuesday, October 14, the Crown Prosecution Service admitted it had wrongly directed the judge to sentence Kelvin under the guidelines for possessing indecent images of children, rather than the more serious offence of producing indecent images of children – something he did by combining one image of a child with a separate image of a different child being raped.
READ MORE: Man guilty of making hundreds of indecent images of childrenREAD MORE: Emotional scenes in court as man jailed for child sex offences more than two years after his arrest
That is a much more serious offence, and should automatically carry a sentence of between four and nine years on its own – far more than the 12 months he was given for those particular offences.
After the sentencing hearing in August, the mother of Kelvin’s victim complained that an error had been made, and appealed to the Attorney General’s office to review the sentence given out by Judge Peter Blair as ‘unduly lenient’.
But a second error had, by then, also occurred. A clerical blunder meant that the CPS incorrectly recorded the date the sentence had been made – it was on August 16 but was wrongly registered as August 22. That meant the Attorney General’s office missed the 28-day deadline for indicating they were reviewing the case, by one day.
The Attorney General’s office was therefore ‘timed out’ of its right to order that the sentence be reviewed. Instead, all the Government’s top law office could do was instruct the Crown Prosecution Service to ask the judge himself to allow extra time for a review. So a special hearing was held at Bristol Crown Court today (Tuesday, October 14), which saw the CPS ask the judge to extend the deadline.
“It does appear there was an error of law,” acknowledged Nicholas Hammond, defence counsel for Kelvin at that hearing. “The Crown is correct, the guidelines should have been followed. But where this was an error, it can not be said to be caused by the defendant,” he added.
The Recorder of Bristol His Honour Judge Peter Blair QC(Image: © UPPA/Photoshot)
At the hearing, Judge Peter Blair acknowledged there had been an error, but said he took into account that allowing an extension would ‘mean a further period of uncertainty’ for Kelvin, who is currently imprisoned in Bristol, but whose transfer to a more long-term jail had been delayed because of the potential review.
Judge Blair listed two recent other similar cases, in which someone using technology to create ‘pseudo images’ that combine images of children with other indecent images, which were the subject of similar appeals over the length or leniency of their sentences.
The judge said he concluded that he did not need to allow the review. “I do not consider that these cases are an example for me to exercise the power to vary the length of time given for an appeal to be made. Therefore the application is refused and the sentence will stand on the date previously given,” he concluded.
Before Tuesday’s hearing, the mother of the victim in the case flagged the error to the Attorney General’s office, and received an apology from the Solicitor General Ellie Reeves MP. In that apology, Ms Reeves said she’d ‘ordered a review of our processes’, after admitting the series of errors had led to Kelvin not being considered for the longer sentence he should have received, and that a clerical error meant the Attorney General was left out of time for a review.
Solicitor General Ellie Reeves MP, pictured in February 2023 (Image: PA)
“I want to sincerely apologise for this error, and any additional stress it may cause you and your family,” said Ms Reeves MP. “While I appreciate it may be of little comfort, please be assured that I have instructed my officials to review our processes to ensure that this will not happen again,” she added.
The mother of the victim in the case, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told Bristol Live: “It’s absolutely not good enough. Who are our judiciary interested in protecting? It has always felt that this whole process, from the very beginning, has protected the defendant and this just highlights it – I am livid,” she said.