Social Work England -v- PEF (anonymity order)
Administrative CourtHigh CourtKing's Bench DivisionAnonymity Order
Claim number: AC-2025-LDS-000014
In the High Court of Justice
King’s Bench Division
Administrative Court
30 January 2025
Before:
The Honourable Mrs Justice Hill DBE
Between:
Social Work England
-v-
PEF
Order
On an application by the Claimant dated 16 January 2025 for anonymity and an order that the 7 February 2025 hearing be held in private
Following consideration of (i) the application notice and evidence in support; (ii) the further submissions of the Claimant submitted by email on 25 January 2025; and (iii) the views of the Defendant, supporting the application, also submitted by email on 25 January 2025
And following consideration of the statement of Eleanor Poole dated 16 January 2025 in support of the application to extend the interim order
ORDER by the Honourable Mrs Justice Hill DBE
Anonymity and related orders
1. The application for anonymity for the Defendant and their child, and consequential restrictions on the court file, is granted.
2. Accordingly, under the Court’s inherent jurisdiction and pursuant to s.6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 and CPR 39.2(4) (i) the name of the Defendant and their child is to be withheld from the public and must not be disclosed in any proceedings in public; and (ii) the Defendant is to be referred to orally and in writing as “PEF“ and their Child as “QEF”.
3. Further, pursuant to s.11 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981, there must be no publication of the identity of the Defendant or their child or of any matter likely to lead to the identification of the Defendant or their child in any report of, or otherwise in connection with, these proceedings.
4. Pursuant to CPR 5.4C(4) (i) the parties must within 7 days file and serve a redacted copy of any statement of case already filed, omitting the name, address and any other information likely to lead to the identification of the Defendant or their child; and (ii) if any statement of case subsequently filed includes information likely to lead to the identification of the Defendant or their child, a redacted copy omitting that information must be filed at the same time and must then be served with the unredacted version.
5. Pursuant to CPR 5.4C(2), any application to obtain documents other than the claim form, judgment or order made by a non-party under CPR 5.4C, is to be made on at least 14 days’ notice to the parties. The parties shall be given the opportunity to respond to the application (including proposals for editing / redacting sensitive content). Any person has liberty to apply in writing on notice to the parties to abridge the time for notice.
6. Unless the Court grants permission under CPR 5.4C(6), no non-party many obtain a copy of any unredacted statement of case.
7. Any judgment in this case should follow the Practice Guidance issued by the President of the Family Division in December 2018 on the avoidance of the identification of children in judgments.
8. Any person wishing to vary or discharge this anonymity order must make an application, served on each party.
Private hearing
9. The application for a private hearing under CPR 39.2(3) is refused.
10. As this order has been made without hearing full argument, if the Claimant wishes to renew it in relation to the 7 February 2025 hearing, in whole or in part, a skeleton argument, with supporting authorities, should be filed with the court and served on the Defendant by no later than 4pm on 3 February 2025, so that it can be considered at the outset of, or at an earlier, hearing.
Costs
11. There shall be no order for costs.
Reasons
1. Anonymity has been granted because this case concerns the Defendant’s child, their private and confidential health diagnoses, and Family Court proceedings that were held in private. All these matters engage the private and family life of the Defendant and their child.
2. There is not, in my judgment, sufficient general public interest in publishing a report of the proceedings which identifies the Defendant and their child and/or the normally reportable details to justify any resulting curtailment of their rights to respect for their private and family life. There are accordingly compelling reasons for the limited derogations from the principle of open justice that anonymity involves.
3. The Claimant proposed using the Defendant’s initials as a cipher. Ciphers including the real initials of children are to be avoided: see p.3 of the Practice Guidance issued by the President of the Family Division in December 2018. Accordingly using the Defendant’s real initials might increase the risk of jigsaw identification of the child. On that basis random letters have been used for both ciphers.
4. The order includes slightly more comprehensive restrictions on access to the court file than were in the original draft, to ensure that the anonymity order is as effective as possible.
5. Given these comprehensive anonymity restrictions, I am not persuaded that a fully private hearing is necessary.
6. Any derogation from open justice is exceptional and will be based on necessity. The party seeking to restrict the operation of the open justice principle bears the burden of establishing that restriction is necessary on the basis of clear and cogent evidence. The Claimant has not persuaded me that such a restriction is appropriate here.
7. The Claimant took me to no precedent for such an order being made in cases of this nature.
8. Indeed, the court is aware of several cases of this kind in which the idea of a fully private hearing was considered but was ultimately either not pursued or considered necessary: see, for example, Social Work England v CW [2022] EWHC 2583 (Admin), Social Work England v Farnham [2023] EWHC 2455 (Admin), Social Work England v Morgan [2023] EWHC 2458 (Admin) and Social Work England v Gardener [2024] EWHC 186 (Admin).
9. In all these cases, the anonymity restrictions and the restrictions on access to the court file, together with sensible limits on what is said in open court, were considered sufficient to protect the privacy interests at stake, without further intruding on the open justice principle by ordering a fully private hearing.
10. I take a similar view in his case. The Judge will have the papers and can be referred to appropriate parts of them. It ought not to be necessary for particular incidents, or aspects of the Defendant’s health, to be described in detail in open court at the hearing.
11. Similarly it should be possible to refer the Judge to the issues relating to the Family Court proceedings referred to at paragraphs 38 to 42 of Eleanor Poole’s witness statement without descending into detail in open court. A suitable open judgment should be possible.
12. By these means, is should be possible to reflect the privacy that has, at least historically, attached to the Family Court. Indeed, with effect from 27 January 2025, while children and their families will typically remain anonymous in the Family Court, new open reporting provisions apply: see https://www.judiciary.uk/open-reporting-provisions-extended-to-all-family-courts-in-watershed-moment-for-family-justice/
13. If there remain real concerns about the need to refer to particular parts of the evidence in open court, it is possible to conduct a short closed hearing for just those parts, gisting the content of the closed hearing once the open hearing resumes. However, I note that in some of the cases mentioned at [8] above, the idea of even a partly private hearing also proved unnecessary.
14. If the Claimant wishes to renew the application for a fully private hearing, or one that is partly in private, provision has been made for them to do so above, in good time before the hearing.