L & Anor (Minors)

Information obtained in family proceedings remains confidential unless the court grants leave after balancing confidentiality and frankness against the public interest and the welfare of children. Disclosure beyond the proceedings is exceptional and, where there is no pending investigation or particular child presently at risk, requires a pressing need. Children Act 1989 sections 17 and 47 do not impose a general duty on local authorities to circulate findings of sexual abuse made in care proceedings. Statutory schemes governing convicted or cautioned offenders cannot be extended by analogy to persons neither convicted nor cautioned. Uncontrolled or potentially oppressive dissemination ordinarily weighs firmly against disclosure.

Two unrelated appeals were heard together. In L, a father acquitted of criminal charges had been found in care proceedings to have sexually abused three children. The High Court authorised disclosure of his address and the substance of the findings to the local authority where he lived. In V, a man found to have engaged in sexual impropriety involving boys was the subject of an order authorising disclosure to a youth football league. The appellants challenged those disclosure orders. The central issue was whether the family court should authorise disclosure to bodies outside the proceedings where there was no pending investigation and no identified child presently at risk. The decision appealed in the L case was reported as Re L (Minors) (sexual abuse: disclosure) [1998] 1 FCR 258.

1. Appeals allowed. The court set aside the permissions to disclose Mr L’s address and the findings concerning him, and the permission to send the approved letter concerning Mr W to the area Youth Football League.
2. The governing approach is a balancing exercise. The court must weigh the confidentiality of family proceedings and the frankness that confidentiality encourages against relevant public interests, the welfare and interests of other children, the welfare of the child who is the subject of the proceedings, and the effect of disclosure on the parties. The factors identified in Re C [1997] Fam.76 are relevant but have no fixed order of importance. Disclosure is generally more readily justified where it assists a police investigation or criminal proceedings, subject to powerful reasons against it.
3. Sections 17 and 47 of the Children Act 1989 require local authorities to safeguard children in need and to investigate suspected significant harm. They may require relevant information to be exchanged between agencies in appropriate cases, but they impose no general duty to inform other areas that a person has been found in family proceedings to have committed sexual abuse. Neither provision supported disclosure on these facts.
4. The statutory and regulatory schemes for convicted or cautioned sex offenders, including the Sex Offenders Act 1997 and the relevant child-care regulations, could not be extended by analogy to persons who had not been convicted or cautioned. Extending that framework to the general public was a matter for Parliament, not the courts.
5. The risk in each appeal could not be related to a particular child presently at risk. Disclosure would therefore require the court to devise an ad hoc system governing the recipients’ use and dissemination of information. The likely spread of the information, and its potentially oppressive and unjust effect, weighed firmly against disclosure. The caution in R v Chief Constable of the North Wales Police and others, ex parte AB and CD [1998] 3 WLR 57 that disclosure should be made only where there was a pressing need supported that conclusion.

Hutchison LJ and Chadwick LJ agreed with Butler-Sloss LJ. Costs followed the event, with the Legal Aid Board to obtain its costs from the local authorities; legal aid taxation applied, and an application for leave to appeal to the House of Lords was refused.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): Both appeals were allowed and the disclosure permissions were set aside.
• High Court of Justice, Family Division: Bennett J authorised disclosure of Mr L’s address and the substance of the findings; the judgment was reported as Re L (Minors) (sexual abuse: disclosure) [1998] 1 FCR 258.
• Bournemouth County Court: Her Honour Judge Bonvin authorised disclosure concerning Mr W to the area Youth Football League.