Case No. ZC96-22

28.At the time the application was made, the applicants met all the conditions required to adopt K set out in sections 42 and 49 ACA. Unfortunately, there is one procedural defect in that their application was given less than three months before the application was made, in breach of s44(3). In most cases this could be cured by the application being withdrawn and another issued, but here that cannot happen because K is now 18. Given that the application was made only two weeks early, Ms Reed on behalf of the applicants invites the court to adopt a purposive interpretation to the statute pursuant to the obligation under s6 Human Rights Act 1998. She submits that it would be nonsensical to treat the non-compliance with time limits, especially in such a minor way, as a bar to the application proceeding and to K being adopted at all. In making this submission, Ms Reed refers to a number of cases including