New rules came into force on the 27 April 2009 allowing representatives of the media to be able to attend private family hearings.  The rules came into place by reason of the government’s intention to introduce legislation to permit the reporting of family proceedings, but due to the limits on reporting, referred to below, it is questionable as to how effective this will be.  The new rules mean that a representative may be in the court room during any hearing relating to children or financial proceedings. It is hard to say at present whether the media will be attending court hearings regularly.  A media representative is not entitled to be present at judicially assisted conciliation or negotiation hearings nor conciliation/negotiation meetings where no judge is present.  An example of this would be a Financial Dispute Resolution hearing within Ancillary Relief proceedings (financial proceedings issued following a divorce petition). They cannot therefore attend a resolution type hearing appointment to the extent that they are used for this purpose.  However, they would be able to attend parts of these hearings to the extent that they are not used for a resolution type purpose i.e. they may be present when the judge gives directions and/or adjudicates on issues between the parties.

There are limits as to what the media may report.  It appears at present that the media will not have the right to see documents that would otherwise be private and that the new rules do not seem to override existing provisions of Acts which forbids publication of information relating to certain private proceedings and which protects the identity of children involved in proceedings.  For the present time it therefore appears that the media may attend hearings but not report on the specifics of what takes place.  It is suggested instead that their reporting will have to be of a more generalised nature commenting on “the processes involved and the principles by which decisions are made”.

In terms of whether the media can be excluded, the court may exclude the media for reasons including the welfare of a child or vulnerable adult or where a witness refuses to give evidence or is less likely to give full and frank evidence in the presence of the media.  A party cannot exclude the media without first making an application to the court and the court would exercise its discretion as to whether or not the media representative should be excluded.

The recent judgment of Child X concerns media access to residence and contact proceedings involving celebrities.  Although the President of the Family Division in that case upheld an order excluding media access, he commented as follows: “By way of general observation it is important to make the following matters clear. First, private law family cases concerning the children of celebrities are no different in principle from those involving the children of anyone else. An application by a celebrity who happens also to be a parent who is unable to agree with a former spouse or partner over the appropriate arrangements for their child(ren) is not governed by any principle or assumption more favourable to the privacy of the celebrity than that applied to any other parent caught up in the court process.”

It remains to be seen as to whether media representatives will be attending the local Surrey family courts.

*This article is for general information purposes only and shall not be treated to be, or constitute legal advice.  We cannot accept any responsibility for any loss arising as a result of acts or omissions taken in respect of this article.

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