Part one: David Burrows offers some preliminary thoughts on the Family Proceedings Rules 2010
At the tail end of last year—a good time to bury bad news—a new set of family proceedings rules, Family Proceedings Rules 2010 (FPR 2010), were laid before Parliament (SI 2010/2955). They are due to come into operation on 6 April 2011.
These rules have been anticipated since Civil Procedure Rules 1998 (CPR 1998) hit the book stands in late 1998; and they have been in MoJ gestation for five years and more. The resources put into their delivery would be risible; save that they relate to a very important subject for those affected: children and some of the poorer members of society, who are now—in addition—likely to be without legal aid (to add legal aid insult to the injury of the convoluted new rules).
The committee which drafted these rules faced an almost insuperable task. They tried to comprise a substantial array of procedural, jurisdictional, case management and evidential facets to very diverse sets of family proceedings in at least three sets of courts. Inevitably this has obscured
