Posts
Anonymisation of a young adult applicant for judicial review about section 20
There are two matters of interest in this unusual judgment by Mr Justice Mostyn in respect of a claim for judicial review brought by a teenager against a local authority, originally published on The National Archives as TT v Essex County Council [2023] EWHC 721 (Fam)...
Why we hardly ever see published family court judgments
Amidst the attention being paid to the courts in the Reporting Pilot, especially the series of broadcasts on the BBC Today programme by Sanchia Berg recently, other outputs from the President's Transparency Implementation Group (TIG) have been slowly emerging. One of...
Closed hearings in the Court of Protection: under-scrutiny?
The Court of Protection will, on rare occasions, not only hear a case in private but do so without telling one of the parties or their representatives, even after it's happened. This is known as a ‘closed’ hearing. The court has power to do so under the Court of...
Cardiff Family Drug & Alcohol Court – a snapshot
On 2 February 2023, I attended the Family Court in Cardiff, aiming to report on cases under the newly launched Reporting Pilot. I identified one case on the court list which I was able both to attend and report. It turned out to be a hearing in the FDAC – the Family...
The Transparency Reporting Pilot: FAQs for legal bloggers
On 2nd February 2023, we ran training for prospective legal bloggers interested in taking part in the Transparency Reporting Pilot. During that training, we received some thoughtful questions which we thought helpful to condense into one blog post, as well as some...
Re Z: A family court decision to share serious abuse findings with Social Work England (with guidance)
Last month, there was a fair bit of media interest around a High Court battle before Mrs Justice Knowles involving a senior social worker who had been found by the family court to have perpetrated domestic abuse towards his ex-partner. HHJ Ahmed, the judge...
‘Somewhere in the history of this case we have lost our humanity’
This is an update on a case I wrote about in September last year - 'Choosing the course which is less stressful to the child'. The hearing before Mrs Justive Lieven last summer concerned applications for care orders by Warwickshire County Council in respect of X and Z...
Deprivation of Liberty and the black mirror
Is removing a mobile phone and access to social media a deprivation of a child’s liberty, or just something that a parent should be entitled to do? Mr Justice Macdonald gives us his answer in Manchester City Council v. P (Refusal of restrictions on mobile phone)...
Transparency in the Family Courts and the Court of Protection: what are the differences?
With the recent launch of the Transparency Reporting Pilot in the family courts, there may be a risk of confusion over some of the terminology, such as “Transparency Orders”, already used in the Court of Protection, and misunderstanding over the role of “legal...
What’s the future for open justice and ‘justice system data’ policy?
“Our justice system is years behind other public services like health and education in collecting and using data to understand performance and impact” says Natalie Byrom, director of research at the Legal Education Foundation (TLEF). “We need a fundamental shift in...