Louise Tickle v Father & Ors

Accredited journalists and legal bloggers are ordinarily entitled to attend Family Court hearings held in private. Exclusion, or restrictions on reporting, must be necessary and require an intense, fact-specific balancing of Articles 8 and 10, with the child’s best interests treated as a primary consideration.

An adjournment of a reporting application is itself an interference with Article 10 and cannot be treated as an ordinary case-management decision. The court must consider the precise scope of the proposed reporting, the real risk of identification or prejudice, the public interest in transparency, and the finite resources of journalists. Parties’ views are important but do not confer a veto.

This was an appeal against HHJ Haigh’s decision to adjourn a journalist’s application to report matters arising during two days of private-law children proceedings. The appellant sought to report procedural and systemic issues, including media attendance, legal-aid difficulties and the consequences of adjournments. She proposed restrictions preserving the anonymity of the child and family and did not seek to report evidence or the substantive welfare issues.

The judge adjourned the application until the final hearing, principally because partial reporting might lack context, mislead the public and prejudice the fairness of the substantive proceedings. The central issue was whether that decision applied the required balance between the journalist’s Article 10 rights and the Article 8 and Article 6 rights of the child and family.

1. Appeal allowed. The court allowed the application to report and determined it itself rather than remitting it.
2. Family proceedings are ordinarily held in private, but accredited representatives of news-gathering organisations may attend under FPR 2010 r.27.11(2)(f). Exclusion is permissible only where it is necessary under r.27.11(3). The word “necessary” has its ordinary meaning and lies between indispensable conduct and conduct that is merely useful, reasonable or desirable: Re H-L (a child) [2013] EWCA Civ 655.
3. Applications to relax reporting restrictions require an intense, fact-specific focus on the comparative importance of the competing Article 8 and Article 10 rights, with proportionality applied to each. The child’s best interests are a primary consideration, but remain subject to balancing against the other rights engaged. The court must also take account of Article 6 where relevant.
4. The judge failed to engage with the appellant’s proposed safeguards. The proposed report concerned generic procedural and systemic matters, not evidence or the factual matrix, and carried effectively no risk that the child or parents would be identified. The concern that reporting might be incomplete or unfair therefore misunderstood the application. The court is not an arbiter of editorial quality or fairness.
5. Adjournment is sometimes appropriate, but it is itself an interference with Article 10 and differs from ordinary case-management decisions. The court must consider the finite resources of reporters and the possibility that the journalist cannot return. The parties’ views are significant but do not amount to a veto.
6. There was a strong public interest in reporting the operation of the Family Justice System. On the facts, there was no material interference with the parties’ Article 6 rights, and the Article 8/10 balance clearly favoured permitting the proposed reporting.

• High Court (Family Division): appeal from HHJ Haigh’s case-management decision to adjourn the reporting application. Appeal allowed and application determined in favour of reporting.