London Borough of Tower Hamlets v Mother & Ors

Section 100(3) of the Children Act 1989 does not prescribe a particular form or timing for an application for leave to invoke the inherent jurisdiction concerning a child. An oral application may be made within the substantive application. A protective injunction may be granted where the gravity and likelihood of feared harm, the balance of harm, the child’s interests and prejudice to the respondents justify it.

The local authority sought a final injunction restraining the parents of a child from disseminating information about the child and her prospective adopters, researching their whereabouts, or contacting them. Earlier orders prohibited publication of identifying information.

The mother argued that leave under section 100(3) of the Children Act 1989 required a formal, separate and staged application, and that the existing orders made further relief unnecessary. The issues were whether leave could be granted without those formalities and whether the injunction was justified by the evidence of risk.

1. Leave under section 100(3) of the Children Act 1989 was granted. The provision imposed no specific requirement as to the form or timing of the application. No separate written or staged application was required; an oral application made with the substantive application was sufficient (para [36]).

2. The court declined to decide whether the earlier injunctions were invalid because that issue had not been fully argued and was unnecessary to the decision. It observed that leave might have been implicit in those orders (para [37]).

3. The order was justified under section 100(4)(a) and (b). The existing order did not cover all the conduct requiring restraint, and there was reasonable cause to believe that the child was likely to suffer significant harm if the inherent jurisdiction were not exercised (paras [38], [41]–[44]).

4. The relevant assessment required consideration of the gravity and likelihood of the feared harm, the balance of harm, the child’s interests and prejudice to the respondents. The evidence established a real risk, not merely a theoretical one, having regard to the respondents’ previous harassment, publication of information and attempts to identify the prospective adopters (paras [40]–[43]).

5. The existence of the 2017 order did not prevent a further injunction. The new order addressed wider dissemination, research, attempts to locate and contact the prospective adopters, and conduct affecting the child’s protection (para [42]).

The injunction was made final in the terms set out in the judgment.

First-instance decision. No appellate history is stated in the judgment.