Re H-W (Care proceedings: Further fact-finding hearing)

LORD JUSTICE BAKER :

This is an appeal against a judge’s decision to refuse a local authority’s application for a further fact-finding hearing in long-running care proceedings in which findings have previously been made that the threshold criteria for making orders under s.31 of the Children Act 1989 were satisfied.

At the conclusion of the appeal hearing, we informed the parties that the appeal would be allowed for reasons to be given at a later date. This judgment sets out my reasons for agreeing with that decision.

I say at the outset that it was with great regret that I concluded that the appeal had to be allowed. These proceedings started as long ago as March 2020 – in other words at the start of the Covid 19 pandemic. In circumstances described briefly below, they have already been the subject of an appeal to this Court ( Re H-W (Children: Proportionality) [2021] EWCA Civ 1451) and thence to Supreme Court ( In the Matter of H-W (Children) [2022] UKSC 17). As a result of our decision on the present appeal, there will be yet further delay before the proceedings are concluded. It is inevitable that by the time they are finally concluded they will have been ongoing for well over three years. Parliament has of course stipulated that care proceedings must be determined without delay and in any event within 26 weeks: s.32(1)(a) of the 1989 Act. Under s.32(5), that period may be extended but only if the court considers that the extension is necessary to enable the court to resolve the proceedings justly. Unfortunately, I am in no doubt that an extension of the proceedings is necessary for precisely that reason.

Background

The background to the proceedings is set out in the judgments of Peter Jackson LJ on the earlier appeal to this Court (paragraphs 3 to 7) and of Dame Siobhan Keegan in the Supreme Court (paragraphs 7 to 13) and need not be repeated in detail for the purposes of the present appeal.

I shall refer to the family members using the alphabetic identification adopted in the earlier judgments. The mother has six children – A and B, who are now adults and living away from home, and the four children who are subject to these proceedings – C (aged 14), D (12), E (9) and F (2 years 9 months). The four children have three different fathers – F1, the father of C and D, F2, the father of E, and F3, the mother’s current partner, who is the father of F. F3 has four older children, one of whom, referred to as G earlier in these proceedings, lived wi