A judge has said he will escalate his frustration at the repeated cases of excessive bundles being submitted to the court. Mr Recorder O’Grady, sitting in the family court at Nottingham, said the bundle presented in a care order case had been more than 1,200 pages, despite there being no permission to exceed the 350-page limit set out in the practice directions.

The bundle had been prepared ahead of an issues resolution hearing (IRH) for a care order involving a six-month-old girl. It included swaths of previous proceedings, which the recorder said were unnecessary and appeared to have been included without thought. Nearly 200 pages of police disclosure were added despite the practice directions excluding those records.

Other documents were inserted ‘seemingly randomly’ jumbling various statements, applications, case summaries and court orders.

‘I regret this has not been an isolated example and I have shared these experiences with the designated family judge for Nottinghamshire,’ said the judge. ‘I am very sympathetic to the heavy workloads of those locally undertaking essential work in this important area of family law. The pressures of that workload are considerable.

‘Those demands can be acknowledged alongside it also being true that when judges are left to divine what the issues are in a case or must wade through voluminous documents that have been unnecessarily included within puzzlingly organised bundles – which, but for being in electronic format might consist of four or five lever arch files – precious court time is wasted. When that happens in one case it is significantly more difficult to promote the interests of justice in all cases.’

O’Grady agreed with the proposition that such disclosure issues add ‘significantly’ to the burdens upon the court in terms of the time it takes to read into a case, concentrate on the key issues and avoid getting drawn down false alleys.

‘Being able to properly prepare for the IRH is essential to making the hearing effective,’ he added. 'It is even more crucial when the court has (usually) at least three IRHs listed in a day.’