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View from the foot of the Tower: Just the facts, ma’am
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The High Court has ruled in the case of
Re NL (Appeal: Interim Care Report: Facts and Reasons) [2014] EWHC 270 (Fam) [2014] 2 FLR (forthcoming) that the practice of parties (sometimes all of them sometimes the Local Authority) drafting Facts and Reasons for the Magistrates in family cases for agreed orders or 'not opposed but not consented to orders' must stop.
This practice wasn't unknown to HMCS prior to this case as you can readily tell by looking at how many of the pro-forma Facts and Reasons forms contain a section specifically addressing whether the reasons had been prepared in draft by another party. There is even a suggestion in the Children Act Advisory Committee
guidance that the Court is entitled to adopt reasons drafted by the parties in uncontested cases - if this was intended to be limited only to private law cases the intention is not...
Read the full article here.
