One of our trustees, Julie Doughty, attended the Annual Open Meeting of the Family Procedure Rule Committee held online on 3 November. Applicants who ask to attend are invited to send in a question that may be answered at the meeting. Our question was about the ban on sharing information from family court hearings held in private – the problem that no one really knows how long that restriction lasts. Does it last forever? We had noted from previous Minutes that it had been suggested jointly by Sir James Munby (retired President of the Family Division) and Sir Nicholas Mostyn (retired High Court judge) that the Committee think about amending the Rules so that the effect of section 12 Administration of Justice Act 1960 will end when the youngest child in the particular case turns 18. More on this below.
Information for the Open Meeting
We are pleased to note that more information was available to those members of the public attending this year than last. This may be in part as a result of feedback we gave after our Chair, Lucy Reed KC attended in 2024. Her report is here.
One ongoing problem though is how long it takes for Minutes to go up on the FPRC site, There were many references in this November meeting to the Minutes of the October meeting but in fact the last Minutes published are from July. Mr Justice Keehan, who chaired the meeting, said the approved October Minutes would go up by the end of the week – but as of 9th November, they haven’t.
What was discussed
We’ve pulled out some points from the many topics that were on the agenda:
Unregulated experts
It was confirmed that a public consultation had closed on the 6th of June. There had been 63 responses. A key issue is whether new rules might unintentionally exclude some forensic experts where the regulatory system is different from psychologists and social workers. A revised draft of the new rules is to be finalised before the end of this year.
Geographical allocation and transfer of cases
There were a couple of points on this. There is a concern that sometimes when an applicant applies to transfer their proceedings at an early stage, there’s a risk that their geographical whereabouts might be made known to a party who poses a risk to them. It was pointed out that when the Private Law Portal is established, initial applications will automatically go to what is picked up by the system as the local court. There are some concerns about whether the ‘local court’ identified in the portal will actually be the closest place to the parties. This will be looked into.
Scott Schedules
A Scott Schedule is an itemised list of allegations used to prove allegations of domestic abuse, usually in the form of numbered specific incidents. The recent report from the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s office had identified a problem in that Scott Schedules were still being widely used although case law discouraged their use as sometimes unhelpful. Amendments to Practice Direction 12 J were discussed, to refer to patterns of behaviour rather than specific instances of abuse.
Pathfinder Model
The Pathfinder model in private law proceedings is scheduled to roll out to Hampshire and the Isle of Wight in January 2026. The relevant practice directions are being amended. It was pointed out that the current Pathfinder pilots are all due to expire at the end of March 2026 and it was therefore confirmed that all of these will be renewed.
Mediation and parenting plans
Similarly, the mediation voucher scheme is due to expire in March 2026. However, a decision has not yet been made as to whether this will be renewed. It was reported that uptake of the vouchers was increasing and there was also an increase in legally aided MIAMs. (However, at the recent Justice Committee meeting, the President had told MP’s that the rates MIAMs and mediation were not increasing at the rate he would have liked to see.) The MoJ believed that the success rate of mediation – i.e. avoiding going to court – was about 70% but they only have access to legal aid data, not to privately funded mediation
New guides produced for parents by Advice Now were highly recommended and the digital team reported that they were working on a planner that separated parents could use to make arrangements for their children via gov.uk
Financial Remedies Reporting Pilot
This pilot is due to conclude in January 2026 but it appears that plans are for it be permanently continued. There will be new rules and practice directions that mirror reporting provisions in children proceedings. There was some discussion about varying points of view (outside the Committee) currently held about the extent of privacy in financial remedy cases. However it was confirmed in the Committee that the current accepted position is that, generally, documents should not be disclosed to anyone without prior permission of the court.
Apparently, there had been very little attendance at financial cases by reporters – only two or three, to the knowledge of Mr Justice Peel. It was decided that although a consultation on continuing the reporting provisions should take place, this was not to be about reporting in principle but limited to procedural matters about providing documents. The consultation would therefore be limited to a small number of organisations including Resolution, the FLBA, The Transparency Project, Law Society and the Press Association. Basically, this would be about implementation, not about cutting down reporting in the current model.
Other disclosure matters
The Committee was informed that the Association of District Judges had raised questions about parties asking the court for leave to disclose some court documents, e.g. court papers in relation to their children being disclosed to the children’s school. It was hoped that the rules could be more made more flexible to allow more information sharing for such purposes.
There is a relatively new Information Sharing and Transparency Working Group as part of the FPRC. This is not due to meet until later in November. It will discuss amendments to be made to current practice directions and some other issues raised in the October meeting (but as noted we haven’t had access to these minutes yet). There were also some matters to be discussed in this Working Group about disclosing information to regulatory bodies for fitness to practise hearings. This Working Group will be merged with an existing ‘Cape v Dring’ Working Group on access to court documents.
Questions from the public
These were uncontroversial. With regard to the question submitted by the Transparency Project, Lord justice Baker said there were a number of issues to be covered by the new Information Sharing and Transparency Working Group including amendments to practice direction 12G and rule 12.73 which will cover a number of strands, including the proposal we had asked about. We had asked what happened to this proposal of which we had last had sight in the April Committee Minutes. We were assured by Lord Justice Baker and the Chair of the committee that the proposal had not fallen off the committee’s agenda.
Quite an interesting question was raised about whether there should be a requirement for parties and their representatives to disclose the use of AI in their statements. The Committee replied that under Practice Direction 17A, various statements and forms already require applicants to verify their material. However, this ‘verification’ of an honest belief that the facts stated are true doesn’t refer to the use of AI. We can’t see that this in itself requires a person to disclose use of AI or even that it would necessarily be interpreted as a requirement to check AI results. No doubt, discussions on this issue will continue.
There will eventually be a set of minutes from this meeting published on the FPRC website.
Image: Finn Hackshaw on Unsplash
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