July 23, 2025

BRV -v- The Family Court sitting at Lincoln (anonymity order)

Administrative Court High Court King's Bench Division Anonymity Order

Claim number: AC-2025-BHM-000226

In the High Court of Justice
King’s Bench Division
Administrative Court

23 July 2025

Before:

The Hon Mr Justice Eyre

Between:

The King on the application of
BRV

-v-

The Family Court sitting at Lincoln

and

BWN
Interested party)

Order

Notification of the Judge’s Decision (CPR 23.12, 54.11, 54.12)

Following consideration of the documents lodged by the Claimant,

ORDER BY THE HON. MR JUSTICE EYRE

1) Pursuant to CPR 39.2(4) and/or the Court’s inherent jurisdiction and/or s. 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998:
i. the names of the Claimant and of the Interested Party are to be withheld from the public and must not be disclosed in any proceedings in public; and
ii. the Claimant is to be referred to orally and in writing as BRV and the Interested Party as BWB.
2) Pursuant to s. 11 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981, there must be no publication of the identity of the Claimant or the Interested Party or of any matter likely to lead to the identification of the Claimant or the Interested Party in any report of, or otherwise in connection with, these proceedings.
3) Pursuant to CPR 5.4C(4):
i. the parties must within 7 days file a redacted copy of any statement of case filed, omitting the name, address and any other information likely to lead to the identification of the Claimant or the Interested Party;
ii. if any statement of case subsequently filed includes information likely to lead to the identification of the Claimant or the Interested Party, a redacted copy omitting that information must be filed at the same time;
iii. unless the Court grants permission under CPR 5.4C(6), no non-party many obtain a copy of any unredacted statement of case.
4) Any person wishing to vary or discharge paragraphs 1 – 3 of this Order must make an application, served on each party.
5) The application for permission to apply for judicial review is dismissed as being out of time.
6) Permission to apply for judicial review is refused.
7) No order as to costs.
8) The claim is certified as being totally without merit.

Reasons

1) I am satisfied that I am in a position properly to determine this matter in advance of the filing of an Acknowledgement of Service.
2) I have given due weight to the importance of public justice but I am satisfied that anonymisation and the related restrictions on publication are necessary in the circumstances of this case in order to avoid the disclosure of information about the personal circumstances of children.
3) The challenge is said to be to an order made on 8th July 2024. However, that appears to be the date of the hearing which led to the judgment of 4th August 2024. It appears from paragraph 98 of the judgment that the order was to follow. I will assume that the order was sealed within a month or less of the judgment. It follows that this claim has been filed more than one year after the hearing which the Claimant says was conducted unfairly; more than 11 months after the relevant judgment; and approximately 10 months after the resulting order. The claim is, accordingly, very substantially out of time.
4) The Claimant has not made any application for an extension of time. In any event he has not shown a good reason for such an extension let alone for one of the duration which would be needed here. As a consequence the claim is to be dismissed as being out of time.
5) Even if the claim had been within time or if an extension of time had been granted permission to apply for judicial review would be refused.
6) I proceed on the basis that this court does have jurisdiction judicially to review the decisions of the Family Court (or at least such decisions as are not made by a High Court Judge). However, that review jurisdiction is a highly attenuated one. It will only be exercised if there has been a failing in the court amounting to a complete abrogation of the judicial process in the context of a right to a fair trial. In that regard see R (Ogunbiyi) v Southend County Court [2015] EWHC 1111 (Admin) and R (Watkins) v Newcastle County Court [2018] EWHC1029 (Admin). There will be such a failing where the judge has made a jurisdictional error in the sense of embarking upon an exercise which the judge had no jurisdiction to embark or if there has been a gross procedural failure amounting to a denial of the right to a fair hearing (see R (Sivasubramaniam) v Wandsworth County Court [2002] EWCA Civ 1738, [2003] 1 WLR 475 at [34] and [56] and R (Strickson) v Preston County Court [2007] EWCA Civ 1132 at [34] and [35]). The judicial review jurisdiction is not necessarily limited to such cases but they indicate the kind of circumstances in which it may be appropriate to hold that there has been such an abrogation of the judicial process as to bring the judicial review jurisdiction into play.
7) Most of the grounds advanced by the Claimant do not even potentially show a ground of judicial review falling within that narrow ambit:
a. In ground 1 the Claimant alleges a procedural impropriety in that pages were missing from the sealed C100 document which he received. The missing pages were important pages but the Claimant had already received a complete but unsealed copy of the document. It follows that he suffered no unfairness by reason of the absence of the pages.
b. Ground 2 is in the most general of terms and amounts to a disagreement with the judge’s assessment of the evidence. It is not a public law ground of challenge.
c. Ground 3 alleges that there was a failure to respond to the Claimant’s pre-action protocol letter. Any such failure cannot be a ground for judicial review.
d. The Claimant does not particularise the flaws which he says, in ground 4, deprived him of his right to a fair hearing. To the extent that the Claimant is relying on matters in addition to those stated in ground 5 it was necessary for him to set out the details. He has not done so and has not shown a ground of challenge with a real prospect of success.
e. The matters alleged in ground 5 would, if substantiated, have the potential to bring the limited judicial review jurisdiction in to play. That is because it is being alleged that the Claimant was not given a fair opportunity to answer the allegations against him and was not given the reasons why those allegations were being accepted. The difficulty for the Claimant is that the judgment of 4th August 2024 shows a wholly different position. It appears from that judgment that questions which the Claimant had prepared for the mother were put to her on his behalf by the judge; that oral evidence was given by the Claimant in respect of each of the allegations against him; and that detailed reasons for the judge’s conclusions were given. In order for this ground to succeed the Claimant would have to show that the account of the hearing set out in the judgment was incorrect in material respects. There is no realistic prospect of the Claimant being able to show that.
8) Even if the Claimant were to establish any of those grounds there would be a further difficulty facing his claim. Judicial review is a remedy of last resort and the court will not normally grant relief in that way where a claimant had an adequate alternative remedy. Here the Claimant had such a remedy by way of seeking to appeal the judge’s order. That would clearly have been an adequate remedy and the court on appeal could have addressed the deficiencies which the Claimant alleges existed in the hearing at Lincoln. The Claimant does not give any indication as to whether he has sought to appeal the order or as to why, if he has not, he did not. That would be a complete answer to the claim and permission would be refused on that basis alone.
9) Not only is permission to be refused but I am satisfied that the claim is also to be certified as being totally without merit. The claim faces three separate obstacles: the fact that it is out of time; the failure to show a claim within the scope of the attenuated judicial review jurisdiction; and the existence of an adequate alternative remedy. Each of those would be fatal to the claim. In order to obtain relief the Claimant would have to overcome all of them. There is no rational basis on which he would be able to do that. It follows that there is no rational basis on which this claim could succeed.
10) As I have explained in my order in claim no AC-2025-BHM-000170 it is not appropriate to make a Civil Restraint Order at this stage but any further unmeritorious application is likely to result in such an order.