The Court of Appeal has unanimously allowed an appeal by journalists Louise Tickle, Hannah Summers and several media organisations against an order made by Mr Justice Williams in December 2024 to keep the identities of Family Court judges anonymous. These judges had made historical decisions about the living arrangements and welfare of Sara Sharif and her siblings between her birth and 2019.
Mr Justice Williams made the order when granting access for the journalists to documents relating to those earlier family court proceedings, so that they could report on the background to the criminal trial that culminated in the conviction of Sara’s parents for the 10-year-old’s brutal murder in 2023. But when granting permission to see and report that earlier material, the judge ordered that the names of the family court judges involved in making decisions over Sara’s future should be anonymised, for their own protection.
The journalists appealed. We reported the appeal hearing here.
The Court of Appeal (Sir Geoffrey Vos, Master of the Rolls, Lady Justice King and Lord Justice Warby) have now said that was wrong. The judge did not have jurisdiction to make such an order, and in doing so he acted irregularly and unfairly towards the media.
The court said the principles of open justice and transparency were as much applicable in family as in other proceedings. The statutory limitations protecting the privacy of children involved in certain family cases contained in section 12 of the Administration of Justice Act 1960 and section 97 of the Children Act 1989 did not create any separate “shielded justice” environment (as the judge had thought).
The legal precedents concerning anonymisation of social workers, experts and others involved or caught up in the justice system were not directly applicable to judges. Judges were appointed to fulfil a crucial public office. The independence and integrity of judges was a cornerstone of democracy. It was the duty of judges to sit in public, save in very exceptional circumstances. Judges had to expect that scrutiny. It was part of their job.
The only basis in law on which such anonymisation could be ordered was under s 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998, on the basis that the judge’s rights under article 2 (right to life), article 3 (freedom from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment), and article 8 (respect for family and private life) might be engaged; but neither the judges nor anyone else had asked Williams J to embark on such an exercise. Judges did not, even in cases like this, need to consider, of their own motion, when asked to relax reporting restrictions, whether to anonymise the names of the judges who have heard the cases in question.
Judges will sit on many types of case in which feelings run high, and where there may be risks to their personal safety, such as cases involving national security, criminal gangs and terrorism. The first port of call is not and cannot properly be the anonymisation of the judges’ names.
The judge inappropriately took into account matters about the previous reporting of cases, including his own, that was irrelevant to the question he had to decide. The judge lost sight of the importance of press scrutiny to the integrity of
the justice system. In short, said the Court of Appeal, he got carried away.
Accordingly, the appeal was allowed, but the historic judges were allowed 7 days before their names were published to allow HMCTS to put measures in place to protect them from any potential harm once their names were released.
You can read the judge’s original judgment in Louise Tickle & Ors v Surrey County Council & Ors [2024] EWHC 3330 (Fam)
and the Court of Appeal’s decision and a useful press summary here: Tickle and Summers -v- BBC, PA and others [2025] EWCA Civ 42
UPDATE
Statement by Louise Tickle and Hannah Summers
24 January 2025
Today’s judgment by the Court of Appeal is an overwhelming endorsement for open justice and the role of the press in holding even the most powerful players in the justice system – judges – to account.
We are immensely grateful for the unstinting pro bono support over 14 months by our barrister Chris Barnes, and the financial and moral support provided when we came to appeal from the charity Law for Change and news outlet Tortoise Media. We are also grateful for the urgency with which the Court of Appeal dealt with this crucial matter of freedom of expression.
All three grounds of appeal that we put forward were allowed: the Court of Appeal decided that Mr Justice Williams’ ban on the naming of judges in the historic Sara Sharif family court cases was unlawful because first, he had no power to anonymise them, second, he undertook a procedurally defective process, and third, that he made that decision partly on the basis of an unfair approach to both of us as journalists, and the media generally.
As the family courts open up further on Monday thanks to the roll out of the successful Reporting Pilot, we hope that this judgment is a watershed moment in driving and cementing a real change in approach in the Family Court to make good on the promises of transparency.
As two freelancers who made the first applications for disclosure of papers in the Sara Sharif family proceedings over a year ago, our focus has been on fighting for the public interest in necessary scrutiny of a case with a profoundly tragic result — the murder of a child by the father and step-mother that a family court had agreed were fit to care for her. We recognise and are grateful for the expansive disclosure of documents and publication permissions that were given by Mr Justice Williams to help the press and public understand the process by which Sara came to be living with her father and stepmother who were convicted last month of her murder.
We feel that any other decision would have set a dangerous precedent going forward and undermined the efforts undertaken over the last two years to open up the family courts to greater transparency.
There now need to be real efforts to work out what went wrong in this heartbreaking case where a young girl’s life was stolen from her, and what might need to change. Information and scrutiny are vital tools in this endeavour.
We have a small favour to ask!
The Transparency Project is a registered charity in England and Wales run by volunteers who mostly also have full-time jobs. We’re working to secure extra funding so that we can keep making family justice clearer for all who use the court and work in it. We’d be really grateful if you were able to help us by making a small one-off (or regular!) donation through our Just Giving page.