The president of the Family Division will ‘reinvigorate’ a family court initiative to cut the ‘unacceptable’ backlog of public law family cases.

In his latest View from the President’s Chambers, Sir Andrew McFarlane said the number of care and supervision proceedings concluding within the statutory 26-week timetable was improving, ‘but progress is slow and unacceptable backlogs remain’. McFarlane has previously attributed the delays to the growing volume of cases and Covid-19.

In October, McFarlane will ‘reinvigorate’ the Public Law Outline (PLO), a template formula for the case management of proceedings introduced a decade ago to help deal with applications within 26 weeks. Forthcoming national and regional webinars will be supported by data showing the progress that has been made, identifying lessons learned and targets for further work.

Sir Andrew McFarlane

McFarlane: 'unacceptable backlogs remain'

One of the targets will relate to issue resolution hearings (IRH), McFarlane said.

The president recently visited court centres where less than 5% of cases were substantially or fully resolved at the IRH stage, meaning 95% of cases needed a final hearing. Judges were also reportedly being given four or five issue resolution hearings to deal with in one day.

‘To undertake an IRH, a judge must be given sufficient time to prepare the case as if preparing for the final hearing and the listing should be sufficient to accommodate the hearing of short evidence if required. Not to allocate sufficient preparation and hearing time to the IRH robs the court and the parties of any real opportunity to resolve issues and effectively accepts that the IRH will be no more than a pre-trial review hearing,’ McFarlane said.

‘Not to allocate time at the IRH stage is a totally false economy given the delay that will then follow, no doubt with further hearings, and the listing of a much longer final hearing in due course if the case remains contested.'