Munby lambasts council over "profoundly concerning" adoption case

The president of the Family Division, Sir James Munby, has made scathing criticisms of Brighton & Hove City Council’s conduct in a complex adoption case.

The judge called the case of W - a four-year old girl - “very complex and worrying” adding “it is, I think, by some margin the most difficult and concerning case of its type I have ever been involved in.”

The case had been before district judges and through appeals, at one point reaching the Supreme Court.

Sir James said the length of the proceedings had largely determined the outcome, which required him to decide whether W should be adopted by her foster parents Mr & Mrs A or live with her father and three older siblings.

The judge said in a judgment exceeding 43,000 words: “This litigation has been proceeding for an unusually long time. To say that it has proceeded in an unsatisfactory manner would be understatement on a grand scale.

“The simple fact, which demands explicit acknowledgment, is that the system has failed W, her siblings, her father and mother and Mr and Mrs A, on a scale which although, happily, unique in my experience – no comfort, of course, to those involved – must be profoundly concerning to anyone and everyone involved in the family justice system.

“The delay for W has been deplorable. And the terrible reality, and there can be no shrinking from this, is that this delay…has, in the event, been determinative of the outcome; an outcome which might perhaps (I emphasise, might) have been different had the case been resolved sooner.”

Parts of the earlier proceedings had considered an incident in which W fell from a sofa. Sir James said this reference in the council’s Interim Threshold Document stated W had been taken to hospital by her father “after reporting that she had rolled off of the sofa and hit her head whilst in his care. [W] was a 4 week old pre-mobile baby”. He said: “First, there was no assertion that W had actually suffered harm as a result of what was alleged to have happened. Secondly, and much more significant for present purposes, the ‘allegation’…was left wholly unclear.

“The implication…would seem to be that, in some way, W was 'helped' off the sofa, the insinuation being that it was the father. This is simply not an acceptable form of pleading. Here, the local authority was willing to wound, yet afraid to strike.”

He descried a later stage of Brighton & Hove’s conduct as showing a “cavalier approach to the facts and disregard for precision”.

The judge also criticised the council over disclosures made to the father's employer that were “inaccurate and misleading”, and led to him losing his job.

“The local authority's failure to comply with the law was shocking,” the judgment stated. “The local authority has apologised and said that it did not intend the father to lose his job. This no doubt is true but quite beside the point. What happened was the all too foreseeable, indeed probably the little short of inevitable, consequence of the local authority's actions. And, as the local authority well knew, this was a father who was bringing up three children.”

Giving his ruling in favour of W’s adoption by Mr and Mrs A, the judge said: “The sad reality is that W does not now have, did not at the time of the hearing before me have, any meaningful relationship with her birth family; the most important, indeed from her perspective the dominating, relationship for W is and has for some time been with Mr and Mrs A and their son. The value to W of that relationship continuing is enormous.”

The council’s executive director of families, children and learning Pinaki Ghoshal, said: “We accept the findings of this judgment. Most importantly, we agree with its conclusion that it would be in the best interests of the child in question for the adoption to proceed.

“We agree with the judgment regarding the unusually long time this litigation has taken, and that this has been deplorable for the child and families concerned. However, the timescales of the legal process are not something over which we have had control.”

Mr Ghoshal added there had been “significant developments” in the council’s practice since 2012 and “we have recognised that there were mistakes with some of our practice in the past and we have apologised for these mistakes”.