Consultation on allocation and gatekeeping in family courts

by reporting watch team | Oct 11, 2025 | Consultations, FCReportingWatch, Open Reporting

This topic was recently covered in a consultation issued by judges that updates guidance to courts on what level of judge or magistrate should sit on a case and generally how applications received will be efficiently administered. The guidance says that it applies to...

Updated Guidance: What to do when a reporter attends your hearing

by reporting watch team | Sep 29, 2025 | Legal blogging, Open Reporting, Resources, Transparency News

We first published our Guidance Note ‘What to do when a reporter attends (or wants to attend) your hearing’ in 2023. Later, we updated it to account for the expansion of the Reporting Pilot and introduction of the Financial Remedies Pilot, developing two...

Sending a mother to prison for contempt of court

by reporting watch team | Aug 14, 2025 | Cases, Court of Protection, FCReportingWatch, Open Reporting

This post by Celia Kitzinger on the Open Justice Court of Protection Project site, ‘Sentencing in contempt proceedings’, is actually a Family Court case. Celia explains why the hearing caught her eye in the lists, how she observed it, and why she has...

‘If I had to live with mum I’d jump out of the window’ – Why two boys ended up living with their dad

by Lucy R | Jun 29, 2025 | Cases, Explanation, FCReportingWatch, Legal blogging, Open Reporting

On the day I saw them trot across the court waiting room on the way back from meeting the judge, Jamie and Andrew* were 10 and 14. I didn’t know that at the time, to me they looked smaller, younger. But the visit seemed to have gone well, as best I could tell from...

Can a court make a journalist reveal their source of information about a family court hearing?

by Julie Doughty | Jun 17, 2025 | Cases, Comment, Explanation, FCReportingWatch, Open Reporting

A recently published judgment, Louise Tickle v The Father & Ors [2025] EWFC 160 is helpful in reaffirming journalists’ rights to protect the confidentiality of their sources, specifically in the context of a Family Court case. This judgment about sources of...

Cross examination of medical experts – exceptional or exceptionally important?

by Lucy R | May 18, 2025 | Cases, Comment, Explanation, FCReportingWatch, Legal blogging, Open Reporting

What this post is about When medical expert witnesses are instructed in family cases, usually to help work out how an injury to a child was caused, their evidence can sometimes be accepted by all the parties, in which case the expert doesn’t need to attend court to...