Solicitors/Barristers or anyone who may know Advice please?

My honest view is that a person can retract a statement or confession at any time up until thetime it is admitted as evidence in court. If at that stage the accused has not rescinded the admission, then it will be incredibly difficult to retract. If the person wishes to retract his confession then that must be made clear to the court at the earliest possible opportunity. It may then be that he is remanded to appear at a later date to allow the prosecution to gather further evidence or the case may proceed based upon the other evidence the prosecution have (please be aware that there is little or no chance the confession is the only evidence the porsecution has - cases involving solely the confession of the accused are unlikely to make it to court without any supporting evidence - the police receive hundreds of confessions every week for all manner of reasons and a case NEVER proceeds without other evidence simply because of this very issue. In any case, admitting that he falsely confessed to something (for a reason such as protecting someone else or anything like that) is of itself actionable under either wasting police time, or perversion of the course of justice. I'd say there is little likelihood of him getting off entirely scot-free.