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England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales Court of Appeal (Civil Division) Decisions >> F (Children), Re [2002] EWCA Civ 1362 (10 September 2002)
URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2002/1362.html
Cite as: [2002] EWCA Civ 1362
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IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM SWINDON COUNTY COURT
(His Honour Judge Wade)
Strand London WC2 Tuesday, 10th September 2002 |
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B e f o r e :
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| IN THE MATTER OF F (CHILDREN) |
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Smith Bernal Reporting Limited, 190 Fleet Street,
London EC4A 2AG
Tel: 0171 421 4040
Official Shorthand Writers to the Court)
The Respondent did not appear and was unrepresented.
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Crown Copyright ©
- LORD JUSTICE THORPE: Mr AF seeks permission to appeal an order made by His Honour Judge Wade on 26th June 2002 in the Swindon County Court. The application was received by this court on 8th July and is accompanied by an extremely full skeleton argument ranging over some 25 typed pages. The skeleton asserts that the judge drew the wrong inference from the facts and misdirected himself in the judgment handed down. He also sought to put in fresh evidence.
- The judgment as approved records that there were before the court three applications concerning six children of the respondents. The local authority applicant sought a full care order in respect of the eldest child, B, and supervision orders in respect of the other five. Mr F also applied for unsupervised contact with all of the children. As the judge said, although the applications were opposed, in reality the issues in the case were quite narrow.
- In relation to B the application for a full care order was by no means an ordinary one. B had tragically suffered a very serious motor accident, as a result of which he is accommodated in a specialist clinic catering for those with similar disability. The judge considered whether it would be helpful or not for the care order in respect of it to be continued whilst he resides in that specialist clinic and reached the conclusion that it would be helpful to continue the care order.
- In a similar way he went on to consider whether it would be helpful to continue the supervision order in relation to the five younger children. Again the judge considered that it would actually be of assistance to the first respondent if she had that support and came to the conclusion that it was in the interests of the children. The judge specifically had regard to the provisions of the check list contained in section 1(3) of the statute.
- Finally, the judge considered the issue of contact: should it be supervised or, as Mr F submitted, could it be unsupervised? The judge was very sympathetic to Mr F's position. In that regard Mr F received considerable support from the guardian ad litem, Mr Place, who was robustly critical of the local authority in their failure to move more imaginatively and more expansively from the restrictions which had been put in place at an earlier and more turbulent stage of the case. The judge made it plain to the local authority that they had to do better and that there had to be movement in the future. However, he considered that it would be premature to remove the requirement for supervision, and in the exercise of his discretion confirmed the restriction until further order.
- Given the narrowness of the issues before the judge, given that in each instance the judge exercised a broad discretion, there is in my opinion no possible role for this court. There are no realistic prospects of success and it would not be of any advantage to Mr F were this application to result in a substantive appeal.
- Mr F has not attended this morning to pursue his application. I have been shown a copy of a letter from the Civil Appeals Office giving him notice of today's hearing. It may be that his absence is a recognition of the inevitability of this outcome. Even if that is not the case, I cannot conceive that anything that Mr F could have said to supplement his written skeleton would have influenced me to any other conclusion.
- For all those reasons this application is dismissed and it is not to be renewed.
Tuesday, 10th September 2002