Background
Medway Council brought care proceedings concerning two young children, B and L, after B was found in December 2024 to have a displaced arm fracture, a rib fracture and multiple suspected skull fractures. The council alleged inflicted injury. The mother relied in part on an accepted account of an earlier accidental fall, while the medical evidence included differing interpretations of B’s imaging and a genetic variant potentially associated with fractures following lesser trauma.
The proceedings substantially exceeded the statutory 26-week timetable. A third attempt to begin the fact-finding hearing collapsed after recently disclosed foster-care logs revealed that B had undergone further imaging, genetic testing and specialist referrals prompted by delayed fracture healing and suspected pseudarthrosis or neurofibromatosis. The council then obtained more than 300 pages of hospital records and additional imaging. Because the court-appointed experts had prepared their opinions without this potentially relevant material, the court adjourned the fact-finding hearing for a third time.
The Court’s Holding
Michael Jones KC, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge, held that the adjournment resulted from significant failures in the council’s information-sharing and disclosure processes. Relevant information known within children’s services and discussed at looked-after-child reviews did not reach legal services, foster-carer logs were not obtained and reviewed regularly, and updated medical records were not secured before the experts reported. The judge found no deliberate withholding and attributed the failure to inadequate systems rather than to any individual.
The court directed further genetic testing and addendum reports from the experts, with Medway Council solely responsible for those costs because its procedural failures had principally made the additional work necessary. It declined, however, to order the council to pay the legally aided parties’ costs for the aborted hearing days. Although costs orders in children proceedings may be made for reprehensible conduct or a stance outside the bounds of reasonableness, the council had given genuine apologies, accepted its failings and proposed detailed remedial measures; an additional order would also reduce resources available to vulnerable families.
Key Takeaways
- Local authorities must maintain workable systems for legal teams to review and disclose foster-care logs, family-time notes, looked-after-child review minutes and health reviews regularly throughout care proceedings.
- Medical records should be fully updated and carefully reviewed before expert instruction and again before any substantive fact-finding or final hearing.
- Health information about looked-after children must flow effectively between health services, children’s services, legal teams and everyone holding parental responsibility.
- A disclosure failure may justify requiring a local authority to fund resulting expert work without necessarily meeting the exceptional threshold for a broader costs order.
Why It Matters
The judgment identifies practical safeguards needed to prevent critical medical information from being missed in care proceedings, particularly where alleged inflicted injuries may have an underlying medical explanation. Incomplete expert instructions can compromise the procedural fairness owed under Article 6 to parents and children and can require substantial additional investigation.
The case also illustrates the direct welfare consequences of disclosure failures. B and L remained in uncertainty while proceedings approached two years, and the court found the further delay positively harmful even though the newly obtained evidence might ultimately leave the experts’ conclusions unchanged.