Children and families being let down by “unacceptably long delays” in justice system: PAC

The report, published today (12 September), lists six recommendations for the government to consider in order to bring down waiting times and improve inefficient processes.

In the report, the PAC notes that while there has been a statutory requirement for over a decade for most public law cases to be completed within 26 weeks, this deadline has never been met.

In December 2024, over 4,000 children were involved in public and private law cases open for longer than 100 weeks.

Written evidence to the PAC’s inquiry raised a number of concerns with the system, including the impact of court backlogs on those involved in domestic abuse cases.

Family courts were often described as “complex”, “inefficient” and “difficult to navigate” for families without legal support.

Meanwhile, the inquiry found that a lack of district judges and social workers are contributing to delays, with particularly poor performance in case durations in London and the South East driven by these shortages (cases lasting on average 53 weeks in London as compared to 24 weeks in Wales).

The PAC observed: “When cases are delayed it becomes more likely that family situations will change before the case concludes, leading to the need for new expert reports and court hearings.”

Looking at the issue of transparency, the PAC observed that “excessive fragmentation” hinders transparency, leading to poor accountability for service improvement and overall performance.

The Committee said: “The family justice system involves many organisations across government and the independent judiciary. There is no single body accountable for overall system performance, including delivery of the statutory time limit of 26 weeks for most public law cases.

“The FJB (Family Justice Board), set up to improve performance across the system, was supposed to meet quarterly but only met on average 2.5 times a year from June 2018 to December 2024 and has no overall strategy to improve family justice. The Board set six priorities for the family justice system in 2024-25 but did not monitor one of these at all.”

The report also drew attention to “significant gaps” in family justice data, warning that the Ministry of Justice and Department for Education do not have the data they need to “fully understand the reasons for poor performance and design well targeted improvements”.

Calling for urgent change, the PAC set out the following six recommendations to Government:

1. MoJ and DfE, should, over the next three months, working with partners as necessary, set out how they plan to improve family justice timeliness overall, including: clear objectives; measurable milestones; and a realistic timetable for achieving them.
2. MoJ and DfE should assess the strengths and weaknesses of the current accountability arrangements for family justice, and report back by December 2025 on how this might be improved, including:

• • how accountability can be strengthened across the system by consolidating current responsibilities or increasing transparent reporting; and
  • how both departments can better support the Family Justice Board nationally, and Local Family Justice Boards locally, to improve performance.

3. MoJ and DfE should take steps to improve efficiency in family justice systems and processes by:

• • making a system-wide assessment of where process inefficiencies impact on performance;
  • putting in place arrangements to learn from and embed good practice;
  • supporting families, in particular, litigants in person, to better navigate the system;
  • promoting alternative resolutions where possible; and
  • clarifying how the additional £2 billion of new investment in children’s social care will be spent, for example, in improving family support to help families stay together and avoid the court system.

4. In its Treasury Minute response the Ministry of Justice, together with DfE, HMCTS and Cafcass, should clarify to the Committee the capacity required for family courts to meet current demand on a timely basis and how, and by when, family justice partners will resolve the workforce shortages in district judges and social workers, including details for locations where shortages are most acute.
5. MoJ and DfE, working with HMCTS, Cafcass and Local Authorities, in consultation with the Judiciary, should set out a joined-up data and evidence strategy over the next six months. This strategy should outline how the department will collect better data on:

• • most important causes of delays and inefficiencies;
  • tracking a child’s progress through the system from end to end;
  • differential outcomes for user groups; and
  • the ‘whole system’ costs of family justice.

6. MoJ should, in conjunction with the DfE, within the next 12 months publish a plan and timeline for the wider roll out of pathfinder, including an assessment of how the model will affect spending and how it intends to reallocate funding to Cafcass and local authorities as necessary.

Welcoming the report, Chair of the Bar Council Barbara Mills KC said: "Due to chronic under-funding, the family justice system has been failing vulnerable children. Those failures are inimical to the welfare of the children the system seeks to protect.

“We are pleased to see a comprehensive set of recommendations to combat the myriad of issues plaguing the system, and ensure timely, effective, sustainable child-centred justice.

“The recommendations echo many of the issues and solutions we highlighted in our submissions to the Public Accounts Committee. I am pleased to see the focus on improving processes to monitor and achieve quicker and more positive outcomes, including the expansion of properly resourced Pathfinder courts, further support for litigants in person and improved use of data.

“The government has a choice. These recommendations provide a roadmap to change but they will not bear the fruit which children, families and those working across the court system need to see and feel without comprehensive investment in family justice.”

Also responding to the report, Lisa Harker, Director of the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory, said: “We are delighted that the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee has called on the Ministry of Justice and Department for Education to set out a joined-up data strategy for the family justice system, working with HMCTS, Cafcass, local authorities and in consultation with the Judiciary.

“Good quality data is critical to holding the family justice system to account and ensuring that it works effectively for children and families.

“[…] The family justice data lags behind other parts of the justice system, and well behind other parts of the public sector.  Critical data gaps include very limited data on the characteristics of children and their parents, and no data on the medium-term outcomes of decisions made in family courts. For example, domestic abuse is not systematically recorded in family court data, despite its prevalence and importance as a policy issue for the current government. Information on children’s and parents’ protected characteristics (such as ethnicity and disability) is not routinely collected, so inequalities in families’ experiences cannot be  monitored. And there is no record of whether the court has engaged with children (such as whether judges have written to explain the outcome of proceedings to children).

“We look forward to working with the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Education, HMCTS, Cafcass, local authorities and the Judiciary to develop a strategy to improve family justice data.”

The Department for Education has been approached for comment.

Lottie Winson