Family President confirms plans to extend transparency pilot to Magistrates in October

The Transparency Implementation Pilots are to be extended to the Magistrates in October, the President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane, has revealed.

The reporting pilots were launched in family courts in Cardiff, Leeds and Carlisle on 30 January 2023, and for private law cases in May.

The Family President said the aim of the pilots was to introduce “a presumption that accredited media and legal bloggers may report on what they see and hear during family court cases, subject to strict rules of anonymity”.

In ‘A View from The President’s Chambers: July 2023’, the Family President noted that to “maximise the learning from the pilot” there was a need for more cases to be covered and that was being “hampered by the opacity of the current lists”.

At present, the daily court lists do not indicate more than the case number and that it is a family case. On this issue, Sir Andrew said: “We are striving to achieve a system which does give journalists more information about the nature of listed hearings.”

In his April bulletin, the Family President revealed that the practice of not naming local authorities on court lists will cease, so the pilot reporter “knows which local authority is involved and can direct any enquiries accordingly”.

It was revealed that the publication of the first Annual Report of the Family Court for England and Wales is due to be in October.

Other topics in the President's announcement included the PLO relaunch and the next steps for the national Deprivation of Liberty court.

Lottie Winson