Family

A judge had jurisdiction to make an injunction to prevent the removal of children in short-term foster placements by the local authority, pending the hearing of an application for an adoption order. In determining whether to make the injunction, the judge should pose to himself, and seek to answer, an initial question as follows:

(a) was there a real prospect that the foster parents would establish that the authority’s decision to remove the children from them notwithstanding that they wished to adopt them was, by reference to public law principles, irrational, disproportionate or otherwise unlawful or was otherwise in breach of their rights, or those of the adopters or of those of the children under Art 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. If the judge’s answer to question (a) was negative, he should refuse to grant the injunction. However, if his answer to the question was affirmative, he should proceed to address further questions which, without purporting to be prescriptive, might run along