Thread by @OpenJusticeCoP

Why does the Open Justice Court of Protection Project make its own lists of hearings?

Can't members of the public rely on the lists the Court publishes: lists from the Royal Courts of Justice, First Avenue House and CourtServe?

It's a lot of work - here's why we do it.

One very important reason is that the published lists 'hide' some hearings by listing them in the wrong place.

Other hearings never appear on the court-published lists: they're effectively 'secret'.

'Hidden' and 'secret' hearings are a massive problem for open justice.

This thread focuses CourtServe, which was clearly never developed with the idea that members of the public would use it to identify hearings to observe.

It's supposed to list ALL the Court of Protection hearings in the county courts every day, under
"Court of Protection" tab.

Over the weekend before, the CourtServe list for Monday 28th February 2022 looked like this.

Under the Court of Protection tab heading there's a list of towns/cities (from Bristol to Worthing)

Click on them + you see hearings in each location, covering a total of 26 hearings.

So 26 hearings are under the COP tab - but there are another 11 scattered around the lists in other towns and cities.

Like the one in Birkenhead you discover if you click meticulously through all the town headings and scroll down through 100s of listed hearings.

There are other Court of Protection hearings in Barrow in Furness, Birmingham, Cardiff, Gloucester, Leeds, Port Talbot, St Helens (+ 2 additional ones in Guildford and Reading).

They don't appear under the COP tab.

These are "hidden" hearings.

Here are some examples of hidden hearings in Barrow in Furness.

Here's a hidden Court of Protection hearing in Birkenhead.

It's hard to see how most members of the public could find it for themselves.

How would you even know if was a Court of Protection hearing.

Here's a hidden Court of Protection hearing in St Helens

Here's a hidden Court of Protection hearing in Cardiff.

It's been wrongly listed as a "Family" case.

We're especially concerned about 'hidden' (and 'secret') hearings before Tier 3 judges - the most senior judges in the Court of Protection.

Whereas 'hidden' hearings are on the lists but in the wrong place, 'secret' hearings don't appear on the lists at all.

Here's a 'hidden' hearing we stumbled across in Swansea, before Sir Jonathan Cohen last week.

It wasn't listed under the Court of Protection tab.

We only found it because we were scrolling down through multiple hearings in Swansea looking for something else.

We've already blogged about a 'secret' hearing before Hayden J in Newcastle on 2 February 2022.

It wasn't on the RCJ list.

It wasn't on the COP list on CourtServe

It wasn't under "Newcastle" on Courtserve.

We heard about it from counsel in case.

That's not open justice.

There's a 'secret' hearing about whether a kidney transplant is in a teenager's best interests on 28th February 2022.

We know it's happening from the media and from a barrister involved in the case.

It's not listed anywhere

There's no information about how to gain access.

The Court of Protection is committed to transparency and open justice. It's a #NotSecretCourt

But these listing failures have a devastating effect on the judiciary's ability to deliver in accordance with its aspirations.

Hidden and secret hearings are not open justice.

It shouldn't be up to us as members of the public to try to solve this problem by scouring the lists, emailing courts, liaising with barristers and re-listing hearings on Twitter.

We've highlighted the problem repeatedly - including back in August 2020.

So we'd like the Court of Protection to act.

We know how committed the judiciary is to open justice.

We've supported judges by identifying a key problem with listings.

We want the Court to figure out the solution.

Because we all believe in open justice and a #NotSecretCourt