England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
APPLICATION FOR PERMISSION TO APPEAL
AND AN EXTENSION OF TIME

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand London WC2
		Wednesday, 10th October 2001

1. LORD JUSTICE THORPE: This is Mr S's application of 29th August for permission to appeal an order made on 19th July by His Honour Judge Fletcher, sitting in the Wolverhampton County Court. Of course, Mr S's application is out of time, but I overlook that since he endeavoured to issue appeal proceedings in the Wolverhampton County Court and they plainly did not appreciate the proper procedures and to some extent may have misled Mr S or contributed to his delay. So I will treat his application as though it had been filed in this court on 29th July.
2. Nonetheless, it remains a completely misconceived application, for the only order made by Judge Fletcher was, first, to direct a report from the Children and Family Reporter to be filed by 27th September, and then to list the case for further directions on 4th October. Mr S has no confidence in the CAFCASS service. He expressed his conviction that the service is biased against him to Judge Fletcher. Judge Fletcher said in terms that he had taken account of Mr S's arguments. He continued:

"I have no reason to think, first, that the officers of the service who were involved in the past are necessarily going to be the officers involved today. That is sometimes the case, I acknowledge that, but it does not have to be the case. It may very well be considered prudent after this period of time and this history that a new reporter looks at the matter. That I would have thought would be a prudent course for the CAFCASS service to adopt."

3. That citation shows the judge steering a fair course between the need to obtain help from the CAFCASS service and a concern to maintain Mr S's confidence in the integrity of the proceedings. What the judge went on to say is that the case would be listed approximately a week after the filing of the report. What he said was this:

"The court will then have the report. If everybody is happy, the court may make no order. But if there is going to be continuing disagreement as to what should happen for the children then the court will order [Mr S] to file statements and set the case up for final hearing."

4. Those citations show the very limited nature of the determinations on 19th July. They were only conventional, sensible decisions to case manage the application towards a resolution that might be consensual; alternatively, might require full hearing. There is no conceivable basis upon which this Court could interfere with decisions of that character. This application is quite simply hopeless and I must refuse it.
Order: Application refused.