Supreme Court to rule next week on appeal by council over costs in care case

A local authority will find out next week (26 March) whether it has won its appeal to the Supreme Court over a ruling that it should pay a father’s appeal costs in care proceedings.

The appeal by the London Borough of Barnet in In the matter of S (a Child) – UKSC 2014/0101 concerned whether the approach to ordering costs to be paid by local authorities in care proceedings set out in Re T (Children) [2012] UKSC 36 extends to the costs of appeals from orders made in such proceedings.

The father’s appeal against a full care order made in respect of his daughter had been allowed by the Court of Appeal.

Despite a finding that Barnet had neither engaged in reprehensible behaviour nor taken an unreasonable stance in the hearing at first instance (which would be required to depart from the normal rule that costs were not awarded in children’s cases) a costs order was made by the Court of Appeal against the authority in respect of the costs of the appeal.

The father had funded his appeal privately and was seeking costs in the sum of £13,787.70.

In the Court of Appeal, Lady Macur had said she considered the question of costs in the appeal to be of a discrete category and the discretion of the Court to be broad.

She concluded that the case of Re T (Children) was distinguishable. Agreeing with the father’s counsel, Lady Macur said this was because the Re T judgment was directed at first instance hearings where public policy considerations militated against any possible financial deterrent to an authority taxed with the responsibility of protecting children from pursuing proceedings.

Likewise, the father's barrister argued, in the case of an appeal neither should a parent be deterred from challenging decisions which impact upon the most crucial of human relationships.