Some regions may be struggling to achieve change of local culture required by relaunch of Public Law Outline, Family President warns

The President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane, has observed that although things are going in the right direction following the relaunch of the Public Law Outline (PLO), “progress is slow” and “unacceptable backlogs remain”.

In ‘A View from The President’s Chambers: July 2024’, the Family President warned that some areas or regions may be struggling to achieve the “change of local culture” that is required by the relaunch, and that data has “consistently suggested” that this is the case in all three areas of London.

He said: “The recent judgment of MacDonald J, the Family Presider for London, in London Borough of Enfield v E (Unconscionable Delay) [2024], provides startling evidence of serial failure to acknowledge the 26-week statutory deadline or the need to make every hearing count and the requirement that experts are permitted only where it is necessary to assist the court to resolve the proceedings justly.”

One of the key aims of the PLO was to ensure that the statutory requirement of completing each case within 26 weeks is met “once again”.

Eighteen months on from the PLO relaunch in January 2023, McFarlane said: “I was, and remain, extremely grateful to all those involved in Public Law children work for accepting the need to re-engage with the tight requirements of the PLO structure and to focus only on resolution of the key issues of threshold, the permanency plan and contact in order to conclude proceedings for the child within the statutory 26 week timeframe.”

He added: “In contrast to the position prior to January 2023, where the direction of travel was very much towards cases taking longer and longer, with delay becoming ‘normalised’ within the system, all the signs are now going in the opposite direction. But progress is slow and unacceptable backlogs remain.”

Sir Andrew said it was his intention to re-invigorate the PLO Relaunch in October through national and regional webinars. These will be supported by data showing the progress that has been made and identifying lessons that have been learned, together with targets for further work.

He added that one such target was the Issue Resolution Hearing (‘IRH’). A further area of focus in the autumn will be short-notice hearings. A small working group has been established to identify what may be done to ensure such hearings are only sought when it is truly necessary to do so, Sir Andrew revealed.

In April, the national Family Justice Board agreed on six priorities, three in public law and three in private law, for each Local Family Justice Board (LFJB) to achieve by 31 March 2025.

The three public law priorities were outlined by the Family President as follows:

• No open public law case longer than 100 weeks;
• Average timeliness for care and supervision cases 32 weeks;
• At least 81% of all new cases to be completed in 26 weeks.

The President went on to discuss the launch of the Suspected Inflicted Head Injury Service Pilot (SIHIS) - developed by the DfE and the FJC Experts Committee.

SIHIS involves the creation of a clinical multi-disciplinary team (MDT) to deal with suspected inflicted head injury in children aged between 0-8 years old.

In June this year, experts claimed that the pilot, which is up and running at NHS trusts in Manchester, Sheffield and Birmingham, was launched with “little to no consultation” with legal professionals and legal professional bodies.

McFarlane said: “It is hoped that this multi-disciplinary approach will have clinical benefits in the investigation and treatment of SIHI and that children will be the main beneficiaries. In addition, from the Family Justice perspective, the hope is that it will assist the court in determining what Part 25 medical experts are necessary and will encourage clinicians to join the pool of experts offering their services to the Family Justice system.”

He added that a full consultation will be undertaken as part of the evaluation process “in due course”.

Other topics in the President's announcement included transparency, security, and digitisation of the Family Court processes.

Lottie Winson