S (a Child), Re

Summary

Hilary Term
[2015] UKSC 20
On appeal from: [2014] EWCA Civ 135

JUDGMENT

In the matter of S (A Child)

before

Lady Hale, Deputy President
Lord Kerr
Lord Wilson
Lord Hughes
Lord Toulson

JUDGMENT GIVEN ON

Heard on 28 January 2015

Appellant William J Tyler QC Hannah M Markham Kate Makepeace Grieve (Instructed by HB Public Law)		Respondent Andrew Bainham Amy Stout (Instructed by Clifton Ingram LLP)

		Intervener (Access to Justice Foundation) Lance Ashworth QC Cyrus Larizadeh Dorothea Gartland (Instructed by Freemans Solicitors)

LADY HALE: (with whom Lord Kerr, Lord Wilson, Lord Hughes and Lord Toulson agree)

This case is about the proper approach to ordering the unsuccessful party to pay the costs of a successful appeal in cases about the care and upbringing of children. It arises in the specific context of a parent's successful appeal to the Court of Appeal against care and placement orders made in a county court. But that issue obviously has to be seen in the wider context of appeals in children's cases generally.

This case

These are care proceedings concerning the four children of Ms A, a girl now aged 13, a boy aged 12, a girl aged seven and a boy aged three. We are concerned only with the seven year old, whom I shall call Amelia. The respondent to this appeal is the father of Amelia and her older brother. He is also the social father of the oldest child, who was born during his marriage to the children's mother. The mother comes from Portugal and the father comes from Nepal. They married in 2002 and separated in 2007, before Amelia was born. The father is not the biological, social or legal father of the youngest child. As it happens, the oldest and youngest have the same biological father, but he has played little part in their lives or in these proceedings.

From May 2009 there were increasing concerns about the presentation and behaviour of the children in their mother's care. Care proceedings were eventually brought in January 2012 and in November 2012 Her Honour Judge Karp found that there had been a serious lack of supervision and neglect of the children; they had suffered physical injuries from each other as a result of not being properly supervised; the mother was unable to meet their emotional, developmental and educational needs; they were at risk of sexual abuse because of their mother's inability to safeguard them from men allowed into the home about whom she knew little; and the two oldest had shown inappropriate sexual behaviour. She found, therefore, for the purpose of the "threshold conditions" in section 31(2) of the Children Act 1989, that they had suffered or were likely to suffer significant harm owing to a lack of proper parental care. This is conceded by the father.

The mother was ruled out as a future carer for any of the four children. The father had had only limited contact with the family since separating from the…