The High Court granted R. K. A. leave to bring judicial review proceedings but refused all substantive relief sought. The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice White on 19 May 2017, concerned a District Family Court decision about a safety order and related family proceedings.
The applicant sought to quash a 31 May 2016 order refusing to exclude the children from a safety order, obtain an audio recording of evidence, and secure declarations and other orders. Among his grounds, he alleged that he had been denied a fair hearing and the opportunity to cross-examine the respondent. He also challenged the respondent’s removal of the children from the family home. Those were his claims; the court did not determine that the removal was unlawful.
The safety order was first made by the District Court on 1 December 2015 for one year. The applicant appealed, and the Circuit Family Court affirmed it after a full rehearing on 23 February 2016. In May 2016, the District Family Court amended the order to correct the applicant’s name but refused his request to exclude the children. The High Court noted that, by the time of its judgment, the safety order had expired and had no further effect.
The central issue was whether the District Family Court had jurisdiction to refuse cross-examination at the 31 May variation hearing. The High Court held that it did. A full rehearing had already taken place in the Circuit Family Court, and there had been no change in circumstances between that hearing and the applicant’s variation summons. The court found that the 31 May hearing did not breach fair procedures. It also said the applicant was out of time to challenge the original safety order, and that making a safety order does not create an adverse presumption in a later custody and access application.
Other matters were left to the relevant proceedings. The High Court said the Circuit Family Court should determine the dispute over why the respondent left the family home with the children, and matters of contact between the applicant and the children. A report under section 20 of the Child Care Act 1991 had been ordered in the family proceedings, with interim sole custody granted to the respondent pending the report or further court order. The High Court said any copy of the report was a matter for the Circuit Family Court. It also found no need for an order requiring delivery of the audio recording, noting that an audio copy had been ordered and that no injustice arose from delay.
The court treated the applicant’s December 2016 interlocutory applications as further grounds for judicial review. It declined to make orders about criminal proceedings that had already been determined; the judgment records that a prosecution for breach of a further safety order was dismissed by the District Court on 28 November 2016. The final order granted leave on the applicant’s filings of 31 August and 17 October 2016 and his applications of 5 and 12 December 2016, but refused the substantive relief on all grounds.