Family anxiety

 Sir Nicholas Wall, president of the family division, has expressed “considerable anxiety” over the government’s plans to remove public funding from private law family work.

Addressing the Bar Council’s Law Reform Committee this week, Sir Nicholas said: “Whilst I strongly support all forms of Alternative Dispute Resolution (including, of course, mediation) I have considerable concern that the public funding of mediation—welcome as that is—will not be sufficient to resolve the problems of the myriad of unrepresented litigants who will come before the family courts. We are already seeing a radical increase in litigants in person, and the stringent criteria for representation in cases of domestic abuse make me concerned that the system will be unable to do swift justice in a large number of cases.”