Posts
The Intermediaries Appeal – what does it tell us?
An appeal judgment has just landed in our inboxes on the correct approach to the use of intermediaries in care proceedings: Re M (A Child: Intermediaries) [2025] EWCA Civ 440. We wrote a post a couple of weeks ago when we became aware that this appeal was in the...
Transparency Orders – but can a parent tell their own story?
Since January the transparency order is 'a thing', in that courts will usually make one in every case where a reporter attends a hearing. Such orders allow the anonymised reporting of a hearing or a case by the media. But what about the parents? Does it allow them to...
SECTION 12 – YET MORE CONFUSION
This is a guest post by Sir James Munby, former President of the Family Division. On 2 April 2025 Harris J handed down her reserved judgment in M v F and C [2025] EWHC 801 (Fam). The case had first come to public attention when the hearing on 20 February 2025 was...
Transparency Orders – tool or straight jacket?
[Update 19 Apr 2025: In light of the judgment in Abbasi delivered by the Supreme Court this week, we've slightly adjusted the wording in a couple of places (shown in italics and square brackets)]. In a recent interesting judgment hiding behind the nondescript title of...
Evaluation of the Pathfinder Pilot in Private Law – published
This announcement appeared quietly on the Ministry of Justice website on 25 March - Private Law Pathfinder Pilot: process evaluation and financial analysis This report provides the findings of the process evaluation and exploratory financial analysis of the...
Are young people losing their freedom because of Deprivation of Liberty Orders?
This is a guest post by Victoria Butler Cole KC. Victoria is a barrister at 39 Essex and you can find her on Bluesky @torbc.bsky.social. The BBC recently published an article about the experiences of a young woman who had spent time in a range of placements including...
Family Court Reporting Watch Roundup: February-March 2025
Welcome to the Roundup, where we correct, clarify and comment on media reports of family law, explain and comment on published family court judgments, and highlight other transparency news. MEDIA COVERAGE OF FAMILY LAW, TRANSPARENCY etc The BBC reported on The...
Access to Family Court documents under the open justice principle
Journalists and legal bloggers (reporters) are normally allowed to see certain types of documents under the Reporting Provisions that came in this year, and earlier during the Reporting Pilot. Sometimes reporters ask to see other relevant documents, and there’s a...
Court of Appeal to decide on ‘necessity’ for intermediaries
We wrote last year about a hearing I attended in Cardiff Family Court about the necessity for an intermediary to assist a father in a fact-finding hearing. We were therefore interested to see recently listed an appeal against a decision made by a judge in a different...
Does a reporter have to be in court to read confidential documents?
Dale Vince, described on Wikipedia as ‘a British Green energy industrialist, former New Age traveller’ attracts a good deal of publicity whether it’s his political donations, owning a ‘green’ football team, or taking libel actions against publishers who wrongly...