Pandemic hits Family Courts hard

The latest statistics released by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has revealed the detrimental impact the coronavirus pandemic had on all areas of the family law sector.

The data showed that between April and June 2020, 56,867 new cases were started in the family courts. This was a 13% decrease during the same time frame in 2019.

The decreases were across various case types:

• financial remedy was down 30%
• matrimonial was down 18%
• adoption was down 24%
• private law was down 7%
• and public law cases were down by 4%

The only area where there was an increase in cases was domestic abuse, which was up by almost a quarter (24%).

There were 46,740 case disposals in April to June 2020, down 16% on the equivalent quarter of 2019.

The average time for a care and supervision case to reach first disposal was 36 weeks in April to June 2020, up 3 weeks from the same quarter in 2019 and the highest average since mid-2013. 34% of these care proceedings were disposed of within the 26-week limit introduced in the Children and Families Act 2014, down 7 percentage points from the same period last year.

The report stated:

“The impacts of Covid-19 can be seen in the relatively low volume of cases across most areas of family justice this quarter. During the initial Covid response, administration and judicial resource was a significant challenge, resulting in the number of courts suspending operations for a period. This led to unprecedented falls in volumes, and substantial changes to timeliness measures. The exception to this general trend is for domestic violence remedy cases, which saw substantial increases in both news cases starting and cases that reached a final disposal – up 24% and 36% respectively and both are at record levels since the published time series began.”

The full report is available to read here.