R v Local Commissioner for Administration for the North and East Area of England, ex parte Bradford Metropolitan City Council
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE EVELEIGH,SIR DAVID CAIRNS |
| Judgment Date | 31 July 1978 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1978] EWCA Civ J0731-1 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Docket Number | QBF No. 393 of 1978 |
| Date | 31 July 1978 |
[1978] EWCA Civ J0731-1
The Master of the Rolls (Lord Denning)
Lord Justice Eveleigh and
Sir David Cairns
In The Supreme Court of Judicature
Court of Appeal
On Appeal from the High Court of Justice
Queen's Bench Division
(Mr. Justice May)
MR. M, MANN, Q.C. and MR. C. SMITH (instructed by J.J. Bash, Esq., Solicitor, London) appeared on behalf of the Respondents.
MR. B. PAYTON (instructed by A.R. Sykes, Esq., Solicitor, Bradford Metropolitan Council) appeared on behalf of the Appellants.
THE MASTER OF THE ROLLS; This case is of legal significance, but more of human interest. I will start with the human side: because that always has its bearing on the legal side. It means picking up the facts from a mass of evidence. My statement of them must be regarded as a statement of complaints, which have been made but not yet found: and may turn out on investigation to be unfounded.
It is all about Margaret. She was born in November 1953 She is now 24. She was one of five children and from a broken home. She is below normal intelligence. She spent most of her childhood in the care of a local authority in community homes. She went to a special school for sub-normal children. She never learned to read or to write. At 16 she went out into the world, mentally handicapped, becoming by turns waitress, cleaner and chambermaid.
At the age of 19 she went as a cleaner to a mental hospital. There she met Fred who was an in-patient. He was a married man of something over 30 years of age, separated from his wife. Margaret went off with him and lived with him. They went together over the country working in hotels and hospitals. She soon became pregnant and had a daughter by Fred born in June 1973 whom they called Susan. Three months later she became pregnant again by Fred and had a son born In June 1974- whom they called Richard. They got a council house at Bradford and moved into it. Fred was on social security, but he did not pay the rent: and after three or four months he went off. He left her in the house with the babies and went to London. That was in February 1975. Margaret did not know where he had gone. She went to the Social Service people. They gave her some money and helped her to carry on. But thenFred telephoned from London. He said to her; "Come to London". She said: "I can't leave the children". He said: "You must come". She did as he told her. She took the babies to the neighbour next door. Now, despite all her shortcomings, she was a good mother and devoted to the children. Susan was 21 months and Richard nine months. Margaret said to the neighbour: "Will you look after them for a month? Here is £1 and I will send you some more when I can. Here is the key of the house and some food". The neighbour did as she was asked. She took the babies in and Margaret went off to London She met Fred there. She got him to send £5 to the neighbour and saw the letter posted. Then Fred took her around with him for a, week or two. He stole a car and took her with him up North in the stolen car. They were caught, arrested and taken before the magistrates in Kendal Fred was put in prison. Margaret was let out on bail. She then went back to Bradford to find the children. But when she got there, she found them gone. The neighbour said that the "welfare woman" had come and taken them away. That was on the 27th March, 1975.
It has since appeared that the Social Service people took them into care on the ground authorised by section 1(1) of the Children's Act 1948 that it appeared to them that the children had been and remained abandoned by their parents.
When Margaret found that her babies had gone she was very upset. She went to the Social Service people and asked them: "Where are my babies?" They would not tell her. She said; "I want to see them. Tell me where they are". Still they refused. She said: "Give me the address". Still they refused. She called the police, but they said she had no right to know. A little later, however, they seem to haverelented and told her.
The babies had been put into the care of foster parents. Not together. The two had been separated one from the other. Susan aged 21 months to one couple: and Richard aged nine months to another couple. They did allow Margaret to see them. But not on her own. The children were brought to a children's home in the city where she saw them in the presence of the social workers and the foster parents. That has been the position ever since. She sees them once a month at the children's home.
Over all this time Margaret would have liked to have returned to her own council house and had the children there. But, as she could not have them with her, she went and stayed with the neighbour next door. Margaret, of course, was on bail and had the theft charge hanging over her.
On the 5th May, 1975 Margaret went to Kendal and, together with Fred was brought before the magistrates on the theft charge. Fred was sent to the crown Court for sentence where he got 18 months. Margaret was put on probation. She has never seen Fred since. She went to her own mother (and stepfather) at York. She tried to get a council house at York. She might have got one, had she had the children. But she had not got them. So she did not get a council house. She decided to stay at York with her mother till Fred came out of prison.
She herself was under the supervision of a probation officer at York. In June 1975 she told the probation officer that she wanted the children back: and the probation officer told the Bradford people. Still she did not get them. They evidently thought it was time they got a court order justifyingtheir care: because it is the law that they had no right to keep the children in their care once the mother made it clear that she desired to take over the care of them That appears from section 1(3) of the Children's Act 1948 and a case in this court of Johns v. Jonesreported in the Times for the 20th June, 1978.
So in August 1975 the social service officers took out a summons for a care order before the magistrates at Bradford. Margaret came over from York, together with the probation officer, to attend the hearing. An interim order was made. The hearing was adjourned. She got legal aid. There was a further hearing. Without going into details, after the further hearing, eventually on the 22nd September, 1975 care orders were made by the magistrates authorising the children to be in the care of the local authority.
Those care orders having been made, it was clear that Margaret could not get the children back. She stayed with her mother at York until Fred was due to come out of prison. Then in April 1976 she went back to Bradford to try and find him. He never returned. She wandered around Bradford living in bed-sitters and lodging houses. Eventually she went to Fred's father and mother in Bradford and they put her up. She wanted to find Fred. She told the social worker that if she could not have Susan and Richard (her babies) she would like more children by Fred.
At the house of Fred's parents in Bradford things happened. Fred's father took an interest in Margaret and started to teach her to read and to write. Now Fred's father and mother had been married 43 years and had grown-up children. Fred's father was then about 66 years of age. He was an old age pensioner. He had not worked for at least fiveyears. Margaret was only 23 years of age. On the 3rd July, 1976 at half-past one in the morning Fred's father went off with Margaret never to return. She became pregnant by Fred's father. On the 1st April, 1977 she gave birth to his son whom they called Joseph. In August 1977 Fred's mother got a divorce from Fred's father. And in September 1977 Fred's father married Margaret. He sought after a while to get the care orders revoked so that Margaret could get the children. It was this year 1978 when the application came before the courts. On the 27th. January, 1978 the Juvenile Court refused to revoke the care order. On the 21st April, 1978 Margaret appealed to the Crown Court. After a hearing of two days, the Crown Court refused to revoke the care order. Meanwhile the two sets of foster parents have applied to the County Court for adoption orders In respect of Susan and Richard: but those proceedings have not come to determination. They have been adjourned pending these proceedings.
I have just spoken of the court proceedings. Alongside those proceedings Margaret, now married to Fred's father, with the help of Fred's father, has been taking further action asking that there be an investigation by the local ombudsman. Before I go into what took place, it is fair to say that Fred's father and Margaret have set up home together in Middlesbrough. They have a flat above a shop with two bedrooms and a living room: and from all reports a very stable relationship. She badly wanted the other two children back with her. And Fred's "father did everything he could to help her.
Now I have to come to the issues in this case. It is about the local ombudsman. Fred's father went to the local library and got a pamphlet about the local ombudsman. Hegot the official forms of complaint and filled them up on her behalf. He must have got help from someone or other on the legal side. On the forms he quoted the Acts of Parliament about children and complained that Margaret had suffered injustice as the result of maladministration by the social workers. He wrote pages and pages of complaints dated the 29th December, 1976. That was at a time when she was six months' pregnant. He wrote it all as if it was Margaret writing, such as "My two children were taken from me", etc. He got her to sign the forms.
The first step (the essential step) in...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Phelps v London Borough of Hillingdon
... ... against the defendants, who were the Local Education Authority (LEA) with responsibility for ... , New York, and in Canada in Gould v Regina (East) School Division (1997) WWR.117 Saskatchewan ... Hillingdon's initiatives in this area were approximately contemporaneous with similar ... ...
-
The King (on the Application of HL) v Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
...the merits of the decision itself’: R v Local Commissioner for Administration for the North and East Area of England ex p Bradford MCC [1979] QB 287, pp311–312. The LGSCO can make recommendations for what action the local authority should take if the complaint is upheld but cannot require ......
-
Westminster City Council v Haywood and Another
...can be severely criticised without attracting the epithet "negligent."" 67 Indeed in R v Local Commissioner ex parte Bradford Council 1979 QB 287,317 Eveleigh LJ said that a faulty decision may amount to maladministration, but that there cannot be a conclusion adverse to the decision-maker ......
-
The King (on the application of Philip Milburn) v The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman
...Denning MR in R v Local Commissioner for Administration for the North and East of England ex parte Bradford Metropolitan City Council [1979] QB 287, at 310: “Parliament was at pains to ensure that the commissioners should not conduct an investigation which might trespass in any way on the ......
-
‘An academic ombudsman’
...incompetence, ineptitude, perversity, tur-pitude, arbitrariness and so on' (see R v Commissioner for Local Administration ep Bradford MBC [1979] QB 287). But it should be inaptitude according to Professor Roy Gregory, Address to BIOA, 1996. (52) Per Lord Donaldson MR in R v Local Com-missio......