Giving judgment in the second welfare of children case to be appealed on the issue of remote hearings since the lockdown began, Sir Andrew McFarlane, President of the Family Division, said judges must ‘be alert to ensure that the dynamics and demands of the remote process do not impinge on the fundamental principles… experience shows that remote hearings place additional, and in some cases, considerable burdens on the participants’.
The case, B (Children) (Remote hearing: interim care order) [2020] EWCA Civ 584, concerned a boy wrongly removed from his grandmother’s home and placed in foster care after a telephone hearing. Sir Andrew said the case should have been adjourned but that ‘no doubt partly because of the exigencies of the remote process, there was a loss of perspective in relation to the need for an immediate decision’. The grandmother had no opportunity to file evidence, was faced with an order she had no chance of challenging, and the boy was taken into care within an hour. ‘It must have been utterly bewildering for them both,’ Sir Andrew said.
The previous appeal concerned an adoption case involving six children where the father did not feel confident at using technology, A (Children) (Remote hearing: care and placement orders) [2020] EWCA Civ 583.
The children’s guardian contended that the eight-day hearing with multiple witnesses should go ahead remotely on the basis further delay would jeopardise the youngest children’s chances of being adopted. However, the Court of Appeal adjourned the case.
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