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Family Court Decisions to Go Online in Pilot Scheme
Added 03/12/2009
A new pilot scheme will see Family Court decisions on care proceedings and disputes over domestic arrangements published online.
The Ministry of Justice hopes the move will make the family courts more transparent. Under the pilot scheme, which started last month, decisions of magistrates courts in Leeds and of magistrates and county courts in Cardiff will be anonymised then published online on the website of the British and Irish Legal Information Institute (Bailii).
In January the scheme will be extended to cover courts in Wolverhampton. The pilot is expected to run for a year, and will be evaluated before a decision is made on whether it should be rolled out nationwide.
It follows changes which came into effect in April opening the family courts to a right of media attendance, although the strict reporting restrictions remain in place.
A Justice Ministry spokesman said: "The pilots are part of a drive to help the public and the media find out how family courts work and how decisions are reached.
"The online judgments will be anonymous to protect the identities of the families involved, and the families themselves will receive a copy of the judgment.
"During the pilots, we will consider retaining copies of judgments for children involved in the case to read when they are older.
"This information will be invaluable for people involved in family proceedings and the general public, and help them understand how decisions are reached in complex and sometimes traumatic cases."
The Ministry of Justice said a Bill being put forward by the Department for Children, Schools and Families would put a new statutory framework in place to enable the media to report the substance of family proceedings but without identifying the families and children involved.
Judgments to be published on the Bailii website under the pilot scheme will be uploaded only after they have been approved in anonymous form by the courts which make them.
Cases to be covered will include interim or final care or supervision orders made in magistrates' courts, county courts or the High Court, when at least one of the following issues is also involved:
- Either parent is given leave permanently to remove a child from the UK
- The final order prohibits direct contact between a child and either or both parents
- A final order is made in a Children Act public law case, including where contact with one or both parents continues
- The final order has depended on contested issues of religion, culture or ethnicity
- The court has had to decide between medical or other expert witnesses when there were significant differences of opinion
- The court has had to decide significant human rights issues
- The Interim Care/Supervision Order was contested
Other types of cases for which publication of a judgment will be encouraged include:
- Contested cases where the facts, outcomes or solutions of the case would, in the discretion of the judge, be worthy of reporting publicly, such as contested residence or disputed contact issues where the outcome is unusual
- Contested adoption applications, applications to make and revoke placement orders; cases involving dispensation with consent and contact
- Emergency Protection Orders