Top judge consults on next steps for increased transparency in Family Court

The President of the Family Division has issued a consultation on further steps to increase transparency in the Family Court.

Sir James said the consultation represented the latest stage of what he considered to be an “incremental” process.

In January this year he issued Practice Guidance: Transparency in the Family Courts – Publication of Judgments [2014] 1 FLR 733, which provided guidelines on much wider publication of written anonymised judgments.

In his latest consultation, the President seeks views and suggestions on the following:

• The impact – on children and families, and on local authorities – and the working to date of the Practice Guidance and ways it may be improved or extended.
• Whether any steps can be taken to enhance the listing of cases in the Family Division and the Family Court so that court lists can be made more informative as to the subject matter of the cases.
• Views on proposed further guidance dealing with the disclosure to the media of certain categories of document, “subject, of course, to appropriate restrictions and safeguards”. Sir James said his current thinking – after discussion with a number of judges – was that the next step might be a pilot project, confined to cases heard by High Court judges sitting in London (and possibly a limited number of DFJs elsewhere), under which the disclosable documents would fall into two categories: (1) Documents prepared by the advocates, including case summaries, position statements, skeleton arguments, threshold and fact-finding documents; (2) Some experts’ reports, or extracts of such reports. Category (1) is envisaged as “the logical next step”, but documents disclosed in this way would initially remain confidential. Sir James said he would proceed carefully, acknowledging that the disclosure of documents caused nervousness amongst many professionals in the family justice system.
• “Preliminary, pre-consultation” views about the possible hearing in public of certain types of family case. The judge said he would particularly value views on: what types of family case might initially be appropriate for hearing in public; what restrictions and safeguards would be appropriate; what form a pilot might take.

The consultation, Family Transparency – The next steps, can be viewed here.