D (Children), Re

Lord Justice Thorpe:

This is an appeal brought with the judge’s permission from an order which Coleridge J made in Exeter on 2 July. Within his order is a provision curtailing the time within which the first respondent mother was to lodge her notice of appeal. The rules provide for a period of 21 days and the judge reduced that to a period of 5 days. The judge was anxious that this court should understand the basis on which he granted permission. Accordingly, he ordered that a transcript of his reasons, which had been orally stated, be prepared at public expense and expedited.

Here we are some 27 days later without the transcript, and Mr Sharp QC who appears for the father, respondent to this appeal, has made enquiries with the depressing result that the transcript was apparently sent from Exeter to Plymouth, for what purpose it is hard perceive since Plymouth simply sent it back to Exeter, and there, as Mr Sharp put it, the trail goes cold.

Mr Sharp within his skeleton has recorded his recollection of the judge’s words to this court that his grant was not intended to indicate any doubt as to the correctness of his order nor to give any encouragement to the appellant. It was given solely to expedite the process of appeal and to ensure that finality would be achieved in the shortest possible time. Colloquially, he apparently said that he was anxious that this case should ‘jump the queue’ in the Court of Appeal. The judge’s objective has most evidently been achieved. We have the grounds, we have the notice of appeal filed on mother’s behalf and sealed just a day out of time, and we have Mr Robin Tolson QC’s very full skeleton argument, with careful skeletons in response from Mr Sharp, from Miss Willbourne, who represents the grandparents, and from Mr Boyd, who represents the Guardian ad Litem.

The case before the judge in Exeter was one of unusual difficulty and complexity. The judge records how time and time again the court hours allotted had proved inadequate and the case had followed him about the circuit, sometimes being heard in Exeter or in Plymouth or in Winchester and on one occasion in London. So some 11 days of judicial time had been allotted to the hearing before the judge came to give his judgment on 2 July.

The case had reached the list of the western circuit liaison judge on a direction from HHJ Wassall, who conducted two hearings consuming 12 days of court time and producing two careful reserved judgments.

This was a case in which the es