Local authority obtaining interim care orders - children placed with foster carers - mother's application for habeas corpus inappropriate means of challenging authority's decision

R (S) v Haringey London Borough Council: QBD (Mr Justice Munby): 13 November 2003

The applicant mother, having unsuccessfully sought to challenge the Haringey council's decision to institute care proceedings by way of judicial review, issued an application for a writ of habeas corpus in respect of her four children, contending that they had been unlawfully removed by the police and were being held against their will, under interim care orders in foster placements, by the council.

The applicant did not appear and was not represented; Lucy Theis QC (instructed by the head of Legal Services, Haringey London Borough Council) for the council.

Held, refusing the application, that the proper forum for challenges to the exercise by a local authority of its powers in respect of the care of children, including the exercise of any parental responsibility vested in it pursuant to an interim care order, was within care proceedings and not in the Administrative Court; that where care proceedings were on foot an application for habeas corpus or a claim for judicial review or under the Human Rights Act 1998 was normally an inappropriate way to challenge a local authority's decision; and that, in any event, since the children were not in secure accommodation but living with foster parents, they were not being detained, so an application for habeas corpus could not lie.

The law reports are prepared by the reporters to the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales; telephone: 020 7242 6471; www.lawreports.co.uk