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The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has criticised the government for showing a lack of urgency in addressing severe delays in the family justice system, warning that children and families are being badly let down.
In its latest report on improving family court services for children, the PAC said ministers have failed to meet statutory targets and are not tackling long-standing workforce and resourcing problems at the root of the backlog.
For more than a decade, most public law cases have been legally required to conclude within 26 weeks – a deadline that has never been met. At the end of 2024, over 4,000 children were involved in public and private law cases open for longer than 100 weeks.
While there was a modest three-week improvement in average case lengths last year, four of the government’s five priority indicators on caseload and timeliness were not achieved. Around a third of public law cases (32%) have at least one hearing cancelled before it takes place, causing further delay and wasted resources.
Written evidence to the inquiry raised serious concerns about the impact of delays on families experiencing domestic abuse. The report notes that family courts are often seen as complex and difficult to navigate, especially without legal support, and found that staff, including Cafcass officers, are not always adequately trained or resourced to support victims.
The Committee warned that the government has a poor understanding of how court delays affect different groups of service users, or of what happens to children once proceedings conclude.
A shortage of district judges and social workers is a key driver of the backlog. Case durations are particularly long in London and the South East, averaging 53 weeks compared to 24 weeks in Wales. The PAC found no systematic assessment of workforce needs and called for clarity on how the government plans to address these shortages.
Delays increase the likelihood that family circumstances change before cases are resolved, triggering new assessments and further hearings. Mediation and other out-of-court settlements can deliver quicker outcomes, but take-up of the Ministry of Justice’s mediation voucher scheme – offering families up to £500 since 2021 – remains low.
The report also calls for transparency over how the additional £2 billion of investment in children’s social care will be spent, including whether it will be used to strengthen family support and reduce reliance on the courts.
Clive Betts MP, deputy chair of the PAC, said:
“Some evidence was deeply personal, and we have been unable to publish all of it – but every submission contributed to a picture of a system badly letting down the children and families that it is there to serve. Alarmingly, when challenged on unacceptable waiting times in the system, government fell back on defending moderate improvements since the pandemic, rather than appreciating the urgent need for reform glaringly obvious to court users.
“Of particular concern to our inquiry was evidence that the system is not meeting the needs of domestic abuse victims. There are encouraging findings highlighted in our report in the roll-out of the Pathfinder scheme… but given the experience of the system described to our inquiry by children and families, complacency is not an option.”
