Only 42% of care proceedings were disposed of within the 26-week limit introduced five years ago (a fall of 7% compared to 2018).
Overall, 66,340 cases were started in the family courts in January to March 2019, up 5% on the same quarter in 2018. This is due to a 6% rise in matrimonial cases, mainly divorce proceedings, and an increase in domestic violence (15%) and private law (12%) cases.
The number of Forced Marriage Protection Orders doubled to 126 over the first quarter. Adoption applications and orders rose marginally, following a downward trend.
Deprivation of liberty applications also rose, with 1,326 applications made in January to March (up 9%).
Jo Edwards, partner at Forsters, described the statistics as ‘shocking’.
‘For years we have been warning that the system is almost at breaking point; it is now clear that the effect of the legal aid cuts, lack of funding for signposting to alternatives to court and swathes of court closures across the country, has been profound,’ she said.
‘People are issuing applications in higher numbers than ever before and the courts soaking up the work of the hundreds that have been closed are swamped. What is needed is clear: stopping the court closures as the impact of the cuts to date is assessed; reinstating funding for early legal advice so that some cases can be diverted from court into mediation, collaborative practice or arbitration; ensuring that we have enough judges, and enough court rooms, available to deal with the cases that need court input; stopping the cuts in court staff/court counters, so that unrepresented litigants have assistance to hand; and moving more applications online/otherwise harnessing technology, so that processes become speedier.
‘The Ministry of Justice would be wise to sit up and take action before it is too late.’
Deborah Jeff, partner at Seddons, said the statistics ‘confirm how badly the family justice system is now performing.
‘The courts are more overloaded than ever after a combination of insufficient resources and litigants in person trying to run their cases, not knowing the law and slowing down the whole system. Rather than wait six months for a final hearing, clients are now choosing a form of private dispute resolution instead such as arbitration and I can see that continuing to be the case until the speed and efficiency of the family justice system improves considerably.’
Claire Burton, family and matrimonial senior associate at BDB Pitmans, said: ‘It would be foolish to concentrate on only comparing periods each year to try and understand what is happening in the family courts.
‘The most relevant information is within the trends that can be seen over time such as the significant rise in Forced Marriage Protection Orders and the sad fall in adoptions. The most relevant information for practitioners and divorcing couples is that the time taken to progress a divorce through the court has increased (yet again) and now stands at 33 weeks to decree nisi or 59 weeks to decree absolute.
‘It is somewhat shocking to see that it takes over six months to reach decree nisi stage, particularly when understanding that financial orders cannot be submitted to the court until this stage. The buzzword against no fault divorce might be that divorce is becoming too easy but the increasing delays do not make this an easy process.’
