Louise Tickle v Herefordshire County Council
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mrs Justice Lieven DBE,Mrs Justice Lieven |
| Judgment Date | 04 May 2022 |
| Neutral Citation | [2022] EWHC 1017 (Fam) |
| Docket Number | Case No: WR18C00163 / WR18C00182 / WR20C00114 |
| Court | Family Division |
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[2022] EWHC 1017 (Fam)
Mrs Justice Lieven
Case No: WR18C00163 / WR18C00182 / WR20C00114
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
FAMILY DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Ms Louise Tickle appeared in person and represented herself
Mr Malcolm Chisholm and Ms Niamh Daly (instructed by Herefordshire County Council) for the First Respondent
The Second Respondent appeared in person and represented herself
The Third Respondent did not appear and was not represented
Mr Timothy Bowe (instructed by Talbots Law) for the Fourth to Eighth Respondents
Hearing dates: 31 March 2022 and 13 April 2022
Approved Judgment
This judgment is being handed down in private on 4 May 2022. It consists of [79] paragraphs.
The judge hereby gives leave for it to be reported.
This is an application by a journalist, Ms Tickle, relating to a completed Children Act 1989 care case involving Herefordshire County Council (‘HCC’). Ms Tickle wishes to be allowed to see certain documents and to screen an interview with the Mother in that case (‘Ms Logan’) within a forthcoming BBC Panorama programme. The intention is that Ms Logan would be named and her face and voice unaltered. There is also an application by HCC for a Reporting Restriction Order (‘RRO’) to place restrictions on what can be reported, including the naming of any employees of HCC.
Ms Tickle represented herself, HCC was represented by Mr Malcolm Chisholm of counsel, and the Children's Guardian by Mr Timothy Bowe of counsel. I heard fairly briefly from Ms Logan as to why she supported Ms Tickle's application and wanted to be able to “tell her story” in public.
I held two hearings on 31 March 2022 and 13 April 2022; I adjourned the decision after the first hearing so that the Guardian could meet with Ms Logan and discuss with her the impact of the proposed programme on the children. In the course of those hearings the parties' positions, and in particular that of HCC, have changed somewhat and I will record that changing position below.
By the time of the first hearing before me, HHJ Plunkett had ordered that Ms Tickle could listen to the audio recordings of various hearings in the earlier proceedings, and no party was resisting Ms Tickle seeing the documentation in issue. The dispute therefore rested on whether Ms Logan could be identified, the steps that should be taken to protect the identity of the children, and whether I should order that employees of HCC should not be identified.
The context of the application and the Panorama documentary is a series of judgments given by Mr Justice Keehan between 2018–2021 containing serious criticism of Herefordshire County Council's Children's Services Department (‘CSD’). Mr Justice Keehan was at the time the Family Division Liaison Judge for the Midlands. Those four judgments are as follows:
Herefordshire Council v AB [2018] EWFC 10
Herefordshire v A, B, C [2018] EWFC 72
BT & GT (Children: twins — adoption) [2018] EWFC 76
Re YY (Children) (Conduct of Local Authority) [2021] EWHC 749 (Fam)
Ms Tickle also referred to the report of Ofsted in its latest focused visit in August 2021 to Herefordshire CSD in which it said: “The local authority has made little progress in improving the quality of practice for children in need and those subject to child protection planning since the inspection in June 2018.” This Ofsted Report was the latest in a line of such reports which have been critical of the quality of the practice of the CSD. She also refers to the concerns expressed by Herefordshire councillors both in public meetings and to Ms Tickle directly about what has been happening within the CSD. Ms Tickle argues that against this background there is a very strong public interest in a documentary revealing the longstanding problems at HCC.
At the time of the proceedings in Ms Logan's case she had three children, who are now aged 8, 4 and 3. An application for an Interim Care Order was made in August 2018 and an Interim Care Order was made with the children continuing to live at home. A final Care Order was made, and about a year later Ms Logan applied to discharge the Care Order; that was done in October 2020. The nature of the case was not, in the context of public law children's cases, particularly unusual, although of course each case is unique on its own facts. The matters pleaded in the original Threshold Document involved a history of domestic abuse between the parents and allegations of fabricated or induced illness (‘FII’) based inter alia on the very high frequency of visits for medical interventions for the children.
There were a number of interlocutory Case Management Hearings (‘CMH’), largely before HHJ Plunkett, but there were no judgments given, as is quite normal in this type of case. I have not listened to the recordings, but I understand that at points the Judge is somewhat critical of the handling of the case by HCC. An expert paediatrician was appointed, Dr Ward, who produced two very long and detailed reports. Throughout the proceedings the children remained at home with Ms Logan under the terms of the Orders.
Ultimately, HCC decided not to proceed with the FII part of the case, and an Agreed Threshold was produced which did not refer to FII. The proceedings came to an end when the Care Order was discharged and therefore s.97 of the Children Act, to which I will refer below, does not apply to those proceedings.
Ms Tickle was introduced to Ms Logan by one of the HCC councillors who had been particularly concerned about her case, as well as about wider issues concerning the quality of HCC's social work. On 2 March 2022 Ms Tickle wrote to HHJ Plunkett, the Designated Family Judge for Worcester and Hereford, asking for permission under s.12 of the Administration of Justice Act 1960 (‘AJA’) to interview and quote Ms Logan and anyone else in the case who was prepared to speak to her about it, see the documentation in the proceedings, see any transcripts, listen to the audio recordings and identify any adults in the case who consented to be identified. She also requested that her editorial team and the BBC lawyers be permitted to listen to the audio tapes.
I note, in passing, that Ms Tickle's application was made in a rather informal manner by email and not copied to HCC or Cafcass. Given the growing support for transparency within the family justice system and therefore the likelihood of such applications becoming more common, it is important that journalists who make applications of this nature always copy in the relevant parties so that matters can be dealt with in as effective and proportionate way as possible.
HHJ Plunkett held a CMH on 21 March 2022. At that hearing he ordered that the children be joined to the application and a Guardian be appointed, ordered that Ms Tickle be provided indices from the previous proceedings, relaxed s.12 AJA to allow Ms Tickle to speak to Ms Logan about the case and to listen to the audio recordings of the hearings, and made various case management directions. He also transferred the case to me as the current Midlands Family Division Liaison Judge.
The matter came before me on 31 March 2022. By that date Ms Tickle had listened to the audio recordings and had set out a list of documents from the proceedings that she wished to have disclosed to her in order to inform her as to “the salient facts, evidence and decision making in the case”.
At the hearing HCC indicated that it did not object to the documents being disclosed to Ms Tickle but sought a RRO in the following terms:
“This order prohibits the publishing or broadcasting in any newspaper, magazine, public computer network, internet website, sound or television broadcast or cable or satellite programme service of:
a. The names and address of:
i. The children …[redacted];
ii. The children's parents (“the parents”), whose details are set out in Schedule 2 to this order;
iii. Any individual having day-to-day care of or medical responsibility for the children (“a carer”), whose details are set out in Schedule 3 to this Order;
b. any picture being or included of either the mother, the father or the children;
c. any other particulars or information relating to the children, including their gender, date of birth, address or anything which identifies the children, including the precise number of children in the children's sibling group;
d. the age of the mother; for the avoidance of doubt it shall be permissible to publish the fact that the mother is “in her thirties”;
IF, BUT ONLY IF, such publication is likely to lead to the identification of the children as being the children of the mother and father;
And:
e. the names of any employee of the First Respondent local authority who is working with, or has worked with, the children in the course of their employment.”
[The parts in bold are those which are at the centre of the dispute before me.]
It became clear during the hearing that HCC sought for Ms Logan only to be interviewed on camera with her face not shown and her voice disguised. It was also apparent from Mr Chisholm's submissions that the application for no employees to be named was separate from any issue about preserving the anonymity of the children and was not based on any risk of identification of the children through that source.
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