Ministers go ahead with six-month limit for care proceedings

The government has decided to bring in a new law imposing a six-month limit on care proceedings in its response to the Norgrove report.

Norgrove said at the launch of his final report last year that care cases took 'far too long' and statutory limits were needed (see solicitorsjournal.com, 3 November 2011).

Nicholas Cusworth QC, chairman of the Family Law Bar Association, said there was a perception that the courts allowed parents who risked losing their children too much of an opportunity to argue their case.

'There must also be an awareness, however, that a six-month guillotine risks creating exactly the type of parental backlash that the government says it is trying to avoid through other proposals,' Cusworth said.

'The firmer the requirement to finish in six months, the more likely it is that decisions will be taken without the best available evidence, in an area where any mistake is potentially disastrous for the child concerned.'

Ministers said last week in their response to the former Whitehall mandarin: 'Our aim is to legislate to provide for a time limit of six months for the completion of care and supervision cases as soon as this is reasonably practicable.

'Cases which can be should be progressed much more quickly. Judges would retain the flexibility to extend a case beyond the time limit in exceptional cases, where this is necessary in the interests of the child and the reasons have been clearly set out.'

Ministers also said they would work with the president of the Family Division 'to ensure a new, more robust role for judges', and legislate to give them more discretion over interim care orders.

To 'reduce the excessive use of expert reports' in care cases, the government promised legislation 'to make clear that in family proceedings the courts should only give permission for expert evidence to be commissioned where it is necessary to resolve the case and the information is not already available through other sources'.

Des Hudson, chief executive of the Law Society, agreed that reducing delays in care proceedings was crucial, but said it should not come at the expense of the children caught up in the system.

'To effectively have the time which cases take now will require additional resources, but court facilities are being closed and the number of solicitors available to help families is likely to reduce in the wake of the legal aid cuts.'

Steve Matthews, chairman of the Magistrates' Association's family courts committee, said courts must retain 'sufficient flexibility' where the interests of children required an extension.