Family President to issue practice guidance on short form court orders in children cases

The President of the Family Division has revealed that he will early next month issue practice guidance on short form court orders in children cases.

Writing in the latest View from the President's Chamber Sir Andrew McFarlane said this was “as a result of the almost unanimous view that I have heard at each court to the effect that, in the current climate, the benefit of long-form narrative court orders is far outweighed by the burden in terms of the time that it takes to draft them”.

The judge continued: “The benefit of narrative orders in both public and private law cases is that all involved can turn to one document that sets out a comprehensive account of the issues, the position of the parties, the timescale of the case and the orders that have been made.

“At present we do not, however, have a universally accessible and accepted computer programme that can create long-form orders at the proverbial click of a mouse. Until a time when the software catches up with what is needed, it will be acceptable for an order, after a long-form order at the first hearing of a case, to be in a short form which simply records the attendance at any subsequent hearing and any orders made or agreements reached on that day.”