FA-2025-000004 - [2025] EWHC 638 (Fam)

The Applicant has not raised this point. As a litigant in person, he could not be expected to have done so. When granting permission to appeal out of time, HHJ Arthur considered that she had delivered the judgment, via email, over a month earlier, i.e. on 25^th July 2024. She had intended that F should have the judgment delivered to him, by “M’s solicitors via email”. As related above, this did not happen. The judgment was eventually sent to the Applicant on 9^th October 2024. Though the Judge was sceptical of the chronology, she gave the Applicant “the benefit of the doubt”. Accordingly, I must proceed based on this chronology.

Both parties continued the litigation and proceeded on the basis that a judgment was handed down at some point. However, in the circumstances, I have not been able to identify when that date most likely was. The procedure that I have laboured to set out above is the one that requires to be followed. The judgment is deemed to be handed down in Court and communicated electronically. This is why it requires to be posted on the Cause List. This is different from emailing the judgment directly to the parties, without the formalities of a hand-down process, which seems to have occurred here. Emailing a perfected judgment directly to the parties, without the procedural compliance identified above, is unsatisfactory and to be deprecated.

Accordingly, I can not be satisfied that HHJ Arthur had jurisdiction to hear the application for permission to appeal. The grounds of the appeal advanced by the Applicant all relate to the fact-finding judgment. This is an entirely logical position on his part. The findings of fact, made by the Judge are integral to her ultimate welfare conclusions. It is entirely right that they should be. Were they not, there would have been no point in having a fact-finding hearing. I propose therefore, to consider the permission application afresh, having concluded that the application requires to be heard by the High Court. The delays in the County Court were replicated in the appeal process. I do not propose to address them. They arose in consequence of an administrative confusion and the challenges faced by a litigant in person. In the circumstances, I grant permission to appeal out of time.

The grounds of appeal are interwoven within the skeleton argument. It is quite an extensive document and very wide ranging in its scope. It alleges “scapegoating, procedural errors and bias”. It also asserts that there were “false applications”, calculated deliberately to mislead the Court. Some of the points raised have no place in this appeal. These include a claim of “slander and reputational harm”, “perverting the course of justice” and a “request for a criminal investigation”. All these are outwith this Court’s jurisdiction in a Private Law appeal of this kind. This is merely a statement of the legal position, it is not a criticism of the Applicant, who, I reiterate, is a litigant in person.

The following grounds can, in my judgement, properly be distilled from the Applicant’s documentation:

Having read the Applicant’s document carefully, I am satisfied that the above does justice to his pleaded case. Rule 31.3(7) FPR 2010 provides that permission for appeal will only be granted where there is (a) real (realistic as opposed to fanciful) prospect of success; or (b) there is some other compelling reason to hear the appeal. This requires to be read in conjunction with FPR Rule 30.12(3) which provides that an appeal may be allowed where the decision was wrong or unjust for procedural irregularity.

There is very considerable overlap between Ground 1 and Ground 2 in the Applicant’s documentation. The criticism of the case management substantially falls under Ground 2, but the Applicant argues “that there has been a procedural error in the way these falsehoods have been handled by the court”. The Applicant continues: “R v K (2008) demonstrates the duty of the court to investigate claims of perjury and misleading statements when presented with evidence of such conduct. The failure to act on the false statements made by the Respondent, both in court and to officials, has undermined the integrity of the proceedings”. The reference there, which has not been cited in full, may be, R v K (2008) EWCA Crim 185. That is a case which deals with allegations of abuse of process in the context of Section 58, Terrorism Act 2000. I have not found it to be of any assistance in advancing the Applicant’s argument. It may be that the Applicant is intending to refer me to the case of R v Kirk [2008] EWCA Crim 434, which related to admissibility of evidence, including bad character, in the context of an allegation of rape. Though this seems more likely, the contextual basis of that case is also so far removed from the circumstances here, as to present little assistance. It is also a criminal case, engaging a different standard of proof.

Essentially, the Applicant profoundly disagrees with the Judge’s evaluation of the evidence and challenges her assessment of which evidence she found to be reliable. In the absence of an error of law or insufficient cogency of reasoning, this court cannot interfere with findings that are within the generous ambit of the Judge’s discretion. Of course, unlike this Court, the Judge had the advantage of hearing the evidence.

The Applicant’s focus in this Ground revolved around the Judge’s refusal to revisit the case management decisions of District Judge McQueen. This, as I follow the argument, relates substantially to WhatsApp audio evidence which the Applicant considered relevant. Though the Applicant asserts that this material was vital, he has failed to establish an evidential basis for this assertion either in this application or when he raised the matter before HHJ Arthur. Judges are permitted a wide ambit of discretion in case management decisions and are usually best placed to take them. Additionally, though the Applicant has illustrated an articulate and adroit ability to navigate the legal process, he did not, as HHJ Arthur noted, seek to appeal DJ McQueen’s decision. The Judge would appear to have seen some transcripts of recordings when she made the following observations:

“Unfortunately the transcripts of the recordings had been produced by F not a professional transcriber, the recordings themselves were not produced to M or to the Court (at least for this fact-finding hearing) so the accuracy of the transcripts could not be confirmed – in fact it was not even possible to confirm that the people recorded were indeed the Ps. There are also the usual difficulties with covert recordings, namely that the person recording knows that others will hear what they say so can modify their behaviour whereas the person being recorded does not; they may be edited or selected to choose/exclude evidence showing the person recording in a negative light, and may have been manipulated or set-up. The Court therefore treats the reliability of the covert recordings that were admitted with extreme caution.”

It is plain that the Judge is properly evaluating both relevance and evidential weight in respect of which there can be no basis upon which to impugn her forensic approach. Further, under this Ground, F makes complaint about the Judge’s failure, as he perceives it, to address all the findings within the parties’ respective Scott Schedules. The Judge found the Schedules, presented by both parties, to be “extremely unhelpful”. She correctly considered them to be “generic”, lacking in detail, relevance and focus. A Judge in these circumstances need only, perhaps should only, make such findings as are required effectively to resolve the welfare needs of the child.

This Ground focuses largely on an incident on 23^rd March 2014, ten years before the hearing date. What is conspicuous about the allegations M makes, generally, is the detail that surrounds them. Sometimes, the detail given is not always favourable to herself and as such, paradoxically, serves to reinforce the reliability of her allegations. The Judge looked at each of the allegations separately, considered the evidence and then evaluated them by reference to earlier conduct and behaviour. In this context, she was entitled to draw reasonable inferences. Drawing inferences from available evidence is an integral part of the investigative process and is wholly different from making the “assumptions” the Applicant contends were made. See Re A (A Child) (No 2) [2011] EWCA Civ 12, [2011] 1 FCR 141, Para 26, per Munby LJ.

This Ground simply cannot be reconciled with the judgment. From paragraph 74 to 92, the Judge, under separate headings, deals meticulously, with each of F’s allegations which she broadly rejects for entirely cogent reasons. The preposition that she “ignored” this evidence is unarguable.

It follows, inevitably, from my reasoning above that there is no evidence at all upon which to support an allegation of bias against the Judge.

Accordingly, permission to appeal is refused. The application is, on the requisite legal test, totally without merit. No further application may be made.

This judgment concerns an application for permission to appeal which has been determined on consideration of the papers. As these decisions do not involve hearing of oral argument, they are relatively rarely reported. Here however, the procedural issues relating to appeal are of wider relevance and require to be placed in the public domain.