Re A

Lady Justice King:

This is an appeal by the mother against orders made by HHJ Dawson in private law proceedings in relation to her daughter, A, who is rising 7 years of age. The orders now challenged were made on 20 May 2021 and:

Provided that A should live with her father by the final confirmation of an existing interim order made in August 2019;

Provided for ongoing contact by A to her mother on a professionally supervised basis every fortnight for up to 6 hours;

Prohibited any further application under the Children Act 1989 being made in relation to A for a period of 2 years without the permission of the court pursuant to section 91(14) of the Children Act 1989 (‘s91(14)’).

By an application notice filed on 15 June 2021, the mother applied for permission to appeal against each of the orders made including the refusal to grant an adjournment. Because the application was made from orders made by a Tier 2 Circuit Judge in private law proceedings, the avenue of appeal was to a judge of the High Court under Part 30(8) of the Family Procedure Rules 2000 (‘FPR’).

On 9 August 2021, Cohen J granted limited permission to appeal, restricting the appeal to the question of contact and the making of the s91(14) order. He refused permission to appeal against the order confirming that A should live with the father or the refusal by the court of the mother’s application for an adjournment. Pursuant to FPR r 30.13(1)(a), the appeal was transferred to the Court of Appeal, Cohen J having considered that the appeal raised an important point of principle or practice.

The mother subsequently applied to renew her application for permission to appeal based on the rejected grounds at an oral hearing. The hearing took place on 5 October 2021 at which Cohen J refused the application.

The issues before this court are whether the judge was:

wrong to make a supervised contact order without specific provision for that contact to progress to unsupervised contact and if not;

whether, in any event, the making of an order under s91(14) coupled with a supervised contact order placed an impermissible fetter on movement towards unsupervised contact and to the development of a more natural relationship between mother and child.

Background

The mother is originally from Hungary. She is a medical doctor and intermittently works in hospitals on locum contracts in various parts of the country. The mother has three children from earlier relationships.

The mother and father formed a rel