Z (Children), Re

Lord Justice Wall:

This is an application by the mother of three children for permission to appeal against an order for unsupervised contact by their father to the two youngest of the children. The order was made by HHJ Collins, CBE, sitting in the principal registry on 27 March 2009.

I say at once that we have imposed reporting restrictions in this case and nothing must be reported which in any way identifies the children concerned.

I saw the case on paper on 2 April 2009. I stayed the order for unsupervised contact, the first period of which was due to take place on 4 April 2009, and I directed that the mother’s application for permission to appeal, with the appeal to follow if permission was granted, should be listed before my Lord, Wilson LJ and myself in the current week. That is how we come to be hearing the application today.

Given the overall view which I have formed of the case, I propose to say as little about the facts as is consistent with the outcome which I will propose. That outcome is as follows. Firstly, that we should grant permission to appeal; secondly, that we should allow the appeal; thirdly, that we should direct that the papers be referred forthwith to the Family Division Liaison Judge for Greater London, Hedley J, with a request that he allocate the father’s application for contact forthwith to a circuit judge other than HHJ Collins, with a view to there being a speedy finding of fact hearing followed by a CAFCASS report and an early resolution of the father’s claim for contact.

The background is as follows. There are three children; they are all boys: L, who is now six; S, who is three, and M who is two. Their parents were married in 2001. There is some controversy about the date of separation. There were certainly proceedings between them in 2007, but on any view they have not lived together since June 2008 which, we were told at the Bar, is the last occasion upon which the father saw the youngest of the children. In June 2008 the children were aged respectively six, two and one year and eight months, on my calculation. The father is 41 and is Algerian by nationality, although he has permanent leave to remain in this country. I do not know the mother’s age. She has Belgian nationality, although I think she is Moroccan by origin.

According to the father’s application for contact, which is in our papers, there were interlocutory proceedings in the County Court between the parties in October 2007 when, we are told, on a withou