Posts
HMCTS response to letter on open justice in the COVID-19 emergency
The chief executive of HMCTS, Susan Acland-Hood, has responded to an open letter from NGOs and academics raising concerns about the provision of open justice measures during the COVID-19 emergency period. In summary, the response confirms: that for public hearings...
Spotlight domestic abuse review – big changes ahead for Family Court
The final report from the spotlight review of family courts' handling of domestic abuse has finally been published : Assessing risk of harm to children and parents in private law children cases The report is long and detailed and has generated quite a lot of...
The Court of Protection Mediation Scheme in Practice
This post was written by Alex Troup, barrister and mediator at St John's Chambers, and was first published on the Court of Protection Handbook blog, and is reproduced with kind permission. [Even though COVID-19 may be making everyone rethink how conventional...
Remote hearings, hybrid hearings, adjourned hearings
Lancashire County Council v M & Ors (COVID-19 Adjournment Application) [2020] EWFC 43 is another case (like Re C that we wrote on here) where an extraordinarily large number of professionals spent many hours working on a notion that was dismissed by the judge,...
Legal Blogging Pilot Flies On…
News just in that the legal blogging pilot (PD36J) has been extended until the end of December. The pilot has been running since 2018 and allows legally qualified legal bloggers to attend private family hearings to aid transparency. Earlier this year the Family...
News About Special Guardianship Orders
Two documents about special guardianship were published in mid June: A Public Law Working Group/Family Justice Council report and a Nuffield Family Justice Observatory research briefing on special guardianship orders (SGOs). The President of the Family Division has...
296 days to correct a factual inaccuracy – effective press regulation?
296 days ago, on 27 August 2019, the Daily Express published an inaccurate article in the print edition of their paper. Today they have published a correction because the regulator IPSO required this. For those who are interested, we saved the original Express article...
Re C – appeal about a hybrid hearing
This post is an update to the hearing I attended last week that I wrote about here . The Court of Appeal judgment has now been published on BAILII as Re C (Children: Covid-19: Representation) [2020] EWCA Civ 734 . The judgment is given by Lord Justice Peter Jackson....
Vaccination – No ‘biggie’ but still ‘a big deal’
This is a guest post from Katie Gollop. Katie is a barrister at Serjeants’ Inn Chambers specialising in healthcare related law. She’s also a Deputy High Court Judge allocated to the Family Division and Court of Protection. Cometh the hour, cometh a timely change in...
How to observe remote hearings in the Court of Protection
This is a guest post by Celia Kitzinger, co-director of the Coma and Disorders of Consciousness Research Centre and Honorary Professor, Cardiff University School of Law and Politics. She tweets as @KitzingerCelia and can be contacted at:...