T (Children), Re

Summary

Trinity Term
[2012] UKSC 36
On appeal from: [2010] EWCA Civ 1585

JUDGMENT

T (Children)

before

Lord Phillips, President
Lady Hale
Lord Mance
Lord Dyson
Lord Carnwath

JUDGMENT GIVEN ON

25 July 2012

Heard on 25 June 2012

Appellant Janet Bazley QC Elizabeth Shaw Sally Stone (Instructed by Hull City Council Legal Section)		Respondent Simon Hirst (Instructed by Sandersons Solicitors)

Intervener (Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service) Teertha Gupta QC Dorothea Gartland (Instructed by CAFCASS Legal Services)		Intervener (The Grandparents' Association) Charles Hale Rebecca Foulkes (Instructed by Freemans Solicitors)

LORD PHILLIPS, DELIVERING THE JUDGMENT OF THE COURT

Introduction

It is rare for the Supreme Court to entertain an appeal that relates exclusively to costs, but this appeal raises an important issue of principle in relation to the liability of a local authority to pay the costs of a party to care proceedings.

The proceedings related to two children, whose parents were separated. The children made allegations of sexual abuse by their father and six other men in which the father's parents ("the grandparents") had colluded. These allegations were included by the appellant ("the Council") in the schedule of matters relied upon in the care proceedings as meeting the threshold criteria for a care order under section 31(2) of the Children Act 1989. The grandparents were joined as interveners, as were five of the six men. The judge conducted a discrete fact-finding hearing which occupied a total of five and a half weeks between February and December 2009. The lengthy findings that he then made exonerated the grandparents and five of the other six interveners.

Four of the five men who intervened qualified for legal aid (the fifth represented himself), but the grandparents' relatively modest income disentitled them from this. The grandfather was aged 67. He is a retired fireman. The grandmother was aged 63 and worked, as she still does, as a part time bookkeeper. His pension and her earnings together amount to about £25,000 a year. The grandparents borrowed £55,000 from a building society, of which they spent £52,000 on legal advice and representation at the hearing. They cannot hope to pay this off in less than 15 years. In these circumstances the grandparents applied for an order that the Council pay their costs.

It was and is common ground that the Council could not be criticised for advancing in the care proceedings the allegations made against the grandparents. The judge, His Honour Judge Dowse, summarised the basis of their application for costs as based "on the apparently inequitable fact that they have largely succeeded in defending the allegations made against them but must bear their own costs". The judge dismissed their application. He did so on the basis that it was not usual to order costs in a child case against a party unless that party's conduct has been reprehensible or its stance unreasonable. In support of that proposition the judge cited authorities that included the judgments of Wilson J in Sutton London Borough Council…

JUDGMENT