DVP notices and orders: vulnerable to human rights challenge?

Lucy Crompton Senior Lecturer Staffordshire University:

The pilot scheme for Domestic Violence Protection Notices (DVPNs) and Orders (DVPOs) ended in the summer of 2012. At the time of writing the powers are still available in the pilot areas and the Government's report is awaited. It is clear from various Government websites that these new remedies are intended to provide emergency protection to victims of domestic violence (see for example https://www.gov.uk/domestic-violence-and-abuse). As Vanessa Bettinson has succinctly put it in another context there is a need ‘to ensure that in the haste to afford greater protection to victims balance is achieved through the adequate observance of the perpetrator's human rights' (V Bettinson ‘Restraining orders following an acquittal in domestic violence cases: securing greater victim safety?' [2012] JCL 512 at p 522). This is essential to ensure that the exercise of the remedy will survive any human rights challenges by suspects.

Little thought seems to have been given to the practical application of human rights...

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