Practice

Provision of court bundles failure to ensure fees disallowedRe H (A Minor) (Court Bundles: Disallowance of fees): FD (Wall J): 15 May 2000

At a hearing in ongoing proceedings relating to a child, there was no court bundle, no summary of the background, and no statement of the issues to be determined nor of the relief being sought by any of the parties, none of whom had put in any evidence.The consequence was that the hearing, which might have been despatched in 20 minutes, took more than an hour and a half.

The particular point which had caused time and costs to be wasted was the failure of solicitors and counsel for the paternal grandparents to prepare a bundle in accordance with Practice Direction (Family Proceedings: Court Bundles) [2000] 1 WLR 737.Leave to report was given with the direction that nothing should be published which could identify the parties, the child or the legal representatives.Held, when disallowing one half of the fees to which the paternal grandparents representatives would have been entitled, that the Practice Direction (Family Proceedings: Court Bundles) had not only directed the provision of a court bundle at every hearing but had also identified the contents and arrangement of those bundles; that, contrary to the apparent belief that the practice direction did not apply to cases estimated to last half a day or less, it applied to all hearings of whatever length of duration in family proceedings in the High Court, in particular to directions appointments and pre-hearing reviews, and that the only exceptions to that rule were urgent applications where circumstances were such that it was not reasonably practicable for a bundle to be provided, and where the court gave specific directions in any particular case.

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