Bedford Borough Council v CD & Ors (Rev 1)

Public authorities involved in care proceedings must provide the court and all parties with full and frank disclosure of material which supports or undermines any party’s case. That duty requires active evaluation of information held across different parts of the authority. A fixed or preferred view of a parent cannot justify withholding material information, failing to challenge influential carers, or presenting a selective account of the evidence. Any reliance on public interest immunity for social-work documents cannot be used to avoid disclosure where that protection has been confined by authority.

This was the final judgment in care proceedings concerning a child whose infant half-sister had died from inflicted injuries. The mother had been acquitted in criminal proceedings, while another person was convicted. The child had remained with foster carers, but serious concerns later emerged about their hostility towards the mother, their influence on the child, and the local authority’s failure to disclose relevant information.

The court considered the authority’s case management, disclosure failures, approach to the child’s wishes and feelings, and the consequent delay in restoring the child to his mother’s care.

1. Disclosure duty. All parties to care proceedings owe the court a duty of full and frank disclosure. The local authority, as the arm of the state, has a strict duty to disclose material which supports or undermines any party’s case: Re R (Care: Disclosure: Nature of Proceedings) [2002] 1 FLR 755. The duty applies to information held by different parts of the authority and includes material revealing that a proposed placement is unsuitable.
2. Public interest immunity. Any argument that social-work documents could be withheld on public interest immunity grounds had been confined to history by Re R. The authority therefore could not rely on such an argument to avoid disclosure.
3. Case management and evaluation. The authority adopted and maintained a negative and fixed view of the mother. It failed to stand back, analyse competing explanations for the child’s wishes and feelings, challenge the foster carers’ views, or integrate information held by its fostering and children’s teams. The court found that the authority selected facts supporting its preferred hypothesis and ignored or rejected material which challenged it.
4. Consequences. The failures materially misled the court and parties, restricted the child’s contact with his mother and maternal family, prolonged the litigation, and delayed reunification by at least nine months. The authority’s conduct amounted to a serious failure of judgment and professionalism, with or without bad faith.
5. Outcome. The judgment recorded the court’s findings concerning the local authority’s culpable case management and disclosure failures. The child was to remain living in the accommodation provided by his mother and cared for by her.