ZH v HS & Ors (Application to Revoke Adoption Order)

An adoption order may be revoked under the High Court’s inherent jurisdiction only in highly exceptional and particular circumstances. The court must ask whether the order was lawfully and properly made and consider its effect on the child. Substantial failures concerning statutory gateway requirements, parental consent, service, party status, guardianship and the required welfare assessment may justify revocation. Adoption is a transformative and normally permanent order. It is permissible only where the statutory conditions and procedural safeguards have been satisfied and the child’s welfare justifies adoption as a last resort.

The applicant, the child’s birth mother, sought revocation of an adoption order made in 2016 in favour of the child’s paternal aunt and uncle. The child had been brought to the United Kingdom after becoming separated from her mother, and the applicants had obtained the order without legal representation. The birth parents, the adopters and the child’s guardian supported revocation; the Secretary of State took no position on the merits.

The application concerned whether the order had been lawfully and properly made, given failures concerning eligibility, notice, parental consent, party status, service, guardianship, the final hearing and the local authority’s Annex A report. The court also considered the effect of revocation on the child.

1. Application granted. The adoption order was revoked under the court’s inherent jurisdiction. The child was to be placed in the care of her birth mother, as all parties agreed following assessment.
2. The court applied the two critical questions identified in the authorities: whether the order was lawfully and properly made, and the effect of revocation on the child. Adoption has exceptional finality and may be set aside only in highly exceptional and particular circumstances. Exceptional circumstances alone are insufficient.
3. The statutory gateway requirements were not met. The child had lived with the proposed adopters for less than three years, and no leave had been obtained under section 42(6) of the Adoption and Children Act 2002. The required notice of intention to adopt had not been given under section 44.
4. The consent safeguards were fundamentally defective. There was no prescribed or properly witnessed consent from the father, and the evidence did not establish consent to adoption. The mother was not made a party, was not served, and her consent was neither obtained nor properly considered for dispensing purposes under section 52.
5. The requirements of Part 14 of the Family Procedure Rules 2010 were substantially breached. The parents, local authority and child were not properly joined; tracing, service, guardianship, notice of the final hearing and directions concerning consent were not addressed.
6. The Annex A report failed to address material matters required by Practice Direction 14C. It did not properly investigate parental consent or the mother’s whereabouts, consider the relative merits of adoption and other orders, provide required medical and safeguarding information, or receive appropriate managerial scrutiny. These were institutional failures.
7. Those errors tainted the entire process. The order was not lawfully or properly made and had to be revoked. The court directed the local authority’s Head of Service to provide its revised procedures for non-agency adoption reports.

First-instance application under the High Court’s inherent jurisdiction. No appellate history is stated in the judgment.