This Judgement of the Family Division and Head of Family Justice) Re P (A Child: Remote Hearing) (Rev 3) [2020] EWFC 32 involved a decision about whether or not a 15 day trial should go ahead. The trial was set down within care proceedings to determine very serious allegations that the mother had harmed her seven-year-old daughter by fabricating or inducing illness.
24. The decision whether to hold a remote hearing in a contested case involving the welfare of a child is a particularly difficult one for a court to resolve. A range of factors are likely to be in play, each potentially compelling but also potentially at odds with each other. The need to maintain a hearing in order to avoid delay and to resolve issues for a child in order for her life to move forward is likely to be a most powerful consideration in many cases, but it may be at odds with the need for the very resolution of that issue to be undertaken in a thorough, forensically sound, fair, just and proportionate manner. The decision to proceed or not may not turn on the category of case or seriousness of the decision, but upon other factors that are idiosyncratic of the particular case itself, such as the local facilities, the available technology, the personalities and expectations of the key family members and, in these early days, the experience of the judge or magistrates in remote working. It is because no two cases may be the same that the decision on remote hearings has been left to the individual judge in each case, rather than making it the subject of binding national guidance.
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Download: Re P (A Child: Remote Hearing) (Rev 3) [2020] EWFC 32
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