“Apologies for any inconvenience caused”: A failure of open justice

By “Anna” (daughter of a P), 29th February 2024

Since being a litigant in person in a hearing concerning my mother (which I wrote about here] I have been observing Court of Protection hearings to increase my knowledge and understanding of law and practice in the area of mental capacity.

I’m finding that watching hearings is a very different experience to reading a blog or a judgment after the event.  When watching a hearing, you see how justice is done step by step, in real time.

Being able to observe hearings is a vital component of open justice and I appreciate the efforts of the judiciary, lawyers, and court staff to make this possible for ordinary members of the public like me. 

This blog is about how on one particular day I tried and failed to observe a hearing and I am writing it because I think my experience highlights how open justice can fail, even though there is much goodwill to enable it. 

I planned to devote some time to observing in the Court of Protection on the morning of Tuesday 13^th February 2024, so I  looked on the evening of 12^th February to see what hearings had been listed. I sent an email early in the morning, asking to observe a hearing before DJ OmoRegie, but I heard back at 9am that the hearing had been vacated (it wasn’t happening). So I had a quick look for another one and chose this one: the screen shot shows the Courtel/CourtServe listing for a hearing before DJ Bland at Leyland Family Hearing Centre.

I liked the fact that it was remote, via MS Teams, and that it was listed for only an hour. So, I sent an email at 9.01am, asking to observe the hearing. I didn’t receive a reply, so at 9.41am I sent another email, marked “urgent”. I still didn’t hear anything so I decided to ring the number on the listing above, at 9.49am. 

The phone rang and rang. Many people would have given up but I was curious about whether I would be able to observe. Eventually somebody answered but it wasn’t the Court of Protection: it was ‘adoptions’. Luckily, when I told her that I wanted the Court of Protection, that person was able to give me two other numbers to try.

Unfortunately, my calls were not answered on either of those numbers either, and I couldn’t leave a message. 

So I didn’t manage to get the link to be able to observe the hearing. Meanwhile, the scheduled start time (10am) came and went. 

Eventually, at 10.45am I received an email from an Administration Officer of the court (in Manchester), replying to my email,  saying: “We have had internet problems this morning, the hearing has now concluded. Apologies for any inconvenience caused”.

I was rather surprised and disappointed to hear that.  How could a hearing scheduled to take place by MS Teams be started – let alone concluded –  if they had internet problems? I thought about it more and my best guess, because I have since learnt something about how requests to observe are dealt with, is the following: the email requesting to observe was sent to the Manchester hub email address, as per the listing. But the hearing was being held in Leyland, which is some distance away from Manchester. Manchester needed to send the request through to the Leyland court, so that the judge could agree to me observing and so I could be sent the transparency order, as well as the video link. My guess is that due to internet problems in Manchester, my email was not dealt with in time and that’s why I missed the hearing. 

However, the internet problems highlight another issue with trying to gain access. If I’d been able to contact the court by phone in a timely manner, I might have been told about the internet problems and then the Manchester hub could have arranged for the Leyland court to send me the link direct since – if my guess is right about what went wrong here – the internet was working fine at the regional court where the hearing was taking place.  So this is another example of the challenges that arise when would-be observers are told to email a regional hub, which then has to pass our emails requesting the link to a local court, which then has to arrange for someone else to send the link to us.  George Palmer had a similar experience and wrote about it here. Under circumstances like these, it is even more important to be able to contact the court by telephone. Telephone numbers are (almost – see below) always included with email addresses on a listing. But I had not been successful by telephone either. 

This hearing had become ‘private’ by default – that is not open justice. 

I thought about the problems I had encountered trying to call and I sent the Manchester Administration Officer a follow up email, asking him to confirm which telephone number was the correct one and he replied saying that it was either of the two numbers I had been given by ‘adoptions’, and not the one shown in the Courtel/CourtServe listing. This is quite a serious problem with the listing. 

It got me thinking and I wondered whether this was a one-off error, or whether other of the Manchester hub court hearings had also been listed with the wrong phone number. I checked back to previous listings around this date and I found it was a pervasive problem. I have listed below some of the examples I found of problems with the listing telephone number.  

I do wonder whether there has been an internal reorganisation of telephone numbers at Manchester but updating the listings has been overlooked. With administration staff being so stretched, it seems to me to be a likely explanation. But it is so important that the public can contact the right people. And it is not efficient if the ‘adoptions’ staff have to answer calls that are not relevant to them. I have written to DJ Bland explaining what happened and asking him if he could investigate whether anything needs to be changed to improve the process in the future. Especially ensuring that the correct telephone numbers are listed. 

This whole episode raises a number of concerns about access to hearings and the extent to which – despite the judicial aspiration for transparency – public observation of proceedings is actually feasible in practice.  There have been difficulties for members of the public trying to access DJ Bland’s hearings before (Just another failure of open justice: DJ Bland in Lancaster County Court). The listing for DJ Bland’s hearing in Leyland  expressly says: “Open justice is a fundamental principle in our courts” but my experience shows that principle doesn’t always translate into reality.  

I appreciate that the Administrative Officer who responded to my failed attempt to access the hearing with “apologies for any inconvenience caused” was only trying to be helpful and to register my disappointment with a common phrase. But when members of the public can’t access public hearings, that’s much more than an “inconvenience”.  It’s a blow against the fundamental democratic principle of open justice and it subverts the judicial aspiration to transparency. And not because of a lack of goodwill, but because of a malfunctioning internet and unanswered telephone calls. 

As of yet, I haven’t received a reply to my email about this. And the wrong telephone number is still being included on listings (see Appendix). 

But I am happy to say that when I requested the link for another hearing before District Judge Bland a few days later, on Monday 19^th February 2024, I didn’t encounter any problems and was able to observe successfully. 

Anna is the pseudonym of a woman whose mother was a P in a Court of Protection s.21A (challenge to a Deprivation of Liberty) application. She is a core team member of the Open Justice Court of Protection Project. She is particularly interested in family experiences of the Court of Protection and increasing understanding of the Court of Protection for families. Anna is not using her real name because she is subject to a transparency order from her mother’s case. She is hoping to change this.  

Appendix: Incorrect listings

A listing with the incorrect telephone number the day after the hearing I observed (14^th February 2024)

I also came across a listing that didn’t have any telephone number: 

And I found what is (now?) the wrong number as far back as 2022: