A Local Authority v D
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr. Justice Mostyn |
| Judgment Date | 10 June 2016 |
| Neutral Citation | [2016] EWHC 1438 (Fam) |
| Docket Number | No. ZE14C00003 |
| Court | Family Division |
| Date | 10 June 2016 |
[2016] EWHC 1438 (Fam)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
FAMILY DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Mr. Justice Mostyn
(In Private)
No. ZE14C00003
Mr. H. Lamb (instructed by the Local Authority Legal Department) appeared on behalf of the Applicant.
Mr. J. Sellars (of Sellars & Co., Sutton) appeared on behalf of the Respondent Father.
The Respondent Mother appeared in Person.
Ms. K. Rodd (Solicitor) appeared on behalf of the Guardian.
Having considered very carefully the very helpful skeleton argument of Mr. Lamb, which sets the case out, to my mind, conclusively, I am satisfied that the court's power to extend a supervision order pursuant to Schedule 3, para.6(3) of the Children Act 1989 does not depend on the supervision order which is sought to be extended to be current or, for that matter, for an extension to have been made prior to the expiration of the existing supervision order.
In my judgment, an application to extend can be made properly after the supervision order has run out, so to speak, and there are, in my judgment, very good policy reasons why the statute should be interpreted in that way. These are set out in para.5.19 to 5.22 of Mr. Lamb's skeleton argument. As he rightly says, supervision orders are entirely child-focused and will only be extended if it is in the child's best interests. There are practical benefits, as he rightly says, to local authorities and to parents of an interpretation of the statutory words, which would enable the local authority to monitor the children's progress whilst the supervision order has not run out without the need to rush back to court, and he rightly says, in para.5.21, the three-year limit to the extension of a Supervision Order prevents families having a sense of lingering uncertainty. So there are strong policy reasons for reading down of the words of the statute to permit the application to be made after the order has run out. Indeed, there is nothing in para 6(3) to suggest to the contrary.
To my mind, the reasoning of Lord Justice Mance (as he then was) in Jones v Jones [2000] 2 FLR 307, when dealing with the analogous situation of the power to vary or extend a periodical payments order, is very helpful. In para.48 of his judgment he proceeded on the basis, without having perhaps analysed the matter specifically, that an application to vary could be made after the expiration of the order "based on an application made prior to its expiry". That view was followed by Lady Justice Black in the recent decision of Mutch v Mutch [2016] EWCA Civ. 370 at para.18, where she said:
"Provided, however, that an application is made prior to the term of the periodical payments ending, the fact that it is heard after the end of the term does not affect the court's power to extend it".
I, for my part, do not see why an application must have been made before the expiration of the term in order for it to be capable of valid adjudication. The power to vary depends on the prior making of a periodical payments order. That is what Lord Justice Mance plainly accepts in his judgment in Jones v Jones. As he says in para.44, the fact that requirements to make payments under the order may have come to an end does not make the order disappear, nor...
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