By Daniel Clark, 11th June 2025
A bundle is a collection of documents that are relevant to the decision that the court is being asked to make. As Kyle Squire, then a barrister at 5 Pump Court Chambers put it in a blog for the Open Justice Court of Protection Project, “‘Bundle’ may be a foreign term and may seem daunting at first but it means nothing more than paperwork: something we are all familiar with and work with in our day to day lives”. Bundles can be digital (usually pdf) or paper.
Practice Direction 13B states that the applicant must prepare the bundle but “[w]here the first named respondent is P [the protected party], and he or she is represented by the Official Solicitor, the responsibility for preparing the bundle will fall to the next named respondent who is represented” (§3.2). In turn, that bundle “must be lodged with the court not less than 3 working days before the hearing, or at such other time as may be specified by the judge” (§6.3).
Not complying with this Practice Direction has consequences: “Failure to comply with any part of this practice direction may result in the judge removing the case from the list or putting the case further back in the list and may also result in a “wasted costs” order in accordance with CPR Part 46.8 or some other adverse costs order” (§12).
I’ve often heard judges complain about the bundle, not only because it’s arrived late but also because the pagination of a paper bundle doesn’t align with the digital version, or it’s become too large and unwieldly with extraneous material.
The hearing I tried to observe on Monday 2nd June 2025 was unique to me in that it’s the first time I’ve seen a judge placed in a position where she’s needed to complain about a bundle being filed just 14 minutes before a listed hearing.
This case (COP 12999111) was before Her Honour Judge Williscroft (incorrectly titled as His Honour in the online list) who was sitting remotely (via MS Teams, not Cloud Video Platform as the online list said) at Chesterfield Civil Justice Centre.
I’d had some problems getting the link – none of my emails were acknowledged and, in a classic case of sod’s law, my phone had decided it must be updated immediately before the listed time of the hearing. This therefore meant I had no way of calling the court.
I was just about to give up and get on with my day when I received an email, at 10:09, with the link and the message “please join now”.
When I joined the link, the only people present were the court clerk, Rory O’Ryan, a barrister, and Poonam Dadhania, a paralegal. Unfortunately, I don’t know who they acted for because nobody said. I expected to find out when I was sent the position statements but, at the time of writing, I’ve not received them.
Rory O’Ryan asked me to confirm I’d received the Transparency Order – I had and was reading it as he asked. I also took the opportunity to say I’d requested the judge’s permission for position statements to be shared, and I saw him take a note of that.
The court clerk said she’d let the judge know we were ready. So far, so ordinary, except there were so few people on the call. The Transparency Order listed four parties; the applicant, NF (the protected party), and three respondents – Leicestershire City Council, NHS Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Integrated Care Board, and LF.
I knew there simply weren’t enough people on the call for that number of parties but the person I assumed to be the court clerk had already confirmed everybody was present.
As I was becoming increasingly confused, and wondering whether I’d been sent the wrong Transparency Order, HHJ Williscroft joined the link at around 10:14.
This is what happened, reproduced from my contemporaneous notes. They may not be completely accurate (we can’t record hearings) and, where I’m not sure what was said, I’ve either said so, or used an ellipsis (…) to indicate that.
Judge (J): This case is listed before me for an hour but I got the bundle at 9:45am. As a result, I am not proceeding. It is unrealistic and unfair to expect me to read a bundle in 14 minutes. So, I’m adjourning the case to another hearing. I understand Mr Clark would like to observe and have some information. I have no difficulty with that … What is the explanation for not providing a bundle?
Rory O’Ryan (RoR): Your Honour this is a situation where matters have been developing. For Your Honour’s benefit and the benefit of the observer, these proceedings relate to Mr [NF] who is in residential care. The residential care provider wishes for him to move on to another placement. It may be that your honour is not aware – there is a further notice…
J: How would I be aware since I haven’t had a bundle?
RoR: I acknowledged within my submission the court may not be aware. It is in the position statement of the local authority and ICB.
J: I haven’t seen the local authority’s position statement.
RoR: The local authority has been attempting to obtain a new placement for Mr [F] to go to –
J: – So that’s your explanation?
[at this point both the judge and Rory O’Ryan were trying to talk at the same time].
RoR: I do not wish to speak over Your Hhonour. Can I just finish the point?
J: Do.
RoR: Confirmation [of funding] from the two public bodies was only received on Thursday and Friday last week. So, the Official Solicitor and ourselves were not in a position to know what order to submit to the court…I accept that an earlier version of the bundle might have been put forward but that wouldn’t have contained the intention to confirm the funding…Perhaps it was an error of judgement on the part of my instructing solicitor and myself, insofar as I was involved. Your Honour, the court has mentioned the lack of the bundle as the primary difficulty. In what I’ve said just now, I’ve also set out the difficulty we and the Official Solicitor were having in terms of identifying what our own position would be. I wasn’t aware the current proposed placement was on the table. I hope that assists in explaining the position.
J: So, will you be in a position to have things organised by 3pm on 12th June? I assume you would want to move him quickly.
RoR: Your honour…the placement is…
J: We’re having a hearing now. I told you we’re not having a hearing. My suggestion to you is 3pm at 12th June.
RoR: I expect the parties will be ready to attend on that occasion. I can’t speak to the availability of the particular advocates as to their personal availability and [I think this is what he said -] to the extent that the court wishes to check our availability –
J: I don’t. That’s the date I’ve got on offer for you, my diary is chock-a-block.
RoR: Can you repeat [the date]?
J: 12th June at 3pm
RoR: I anticipate the other parties will be in a position…. There is a care plan which was updated as recently as 28th May which the applicant and ICB are in agreement with. There needs to further work as to conveyance, and the issues of transition and conveyance are connected to one another. Quite a detailed conveyance plan was created for another transition… The ICB are leading on the issue of conveyance.
J: So those matters could be resolved…ready for 12th June. Mr Clark can you attend on the 12th June?
[I confirmed I could]
J: And you’d like the position statements. Is there any difficulty with that from the applicant?
RoR: No Your Honour [I think RoR corrected the judge here by saying he didn’t represent the applicant. I assume from what he was saying that he represents the local authority] … If I can confirm, should we send these to Mr Clark directly?
J: Well I imagine you won’t have his email address but you can get it from my clerk, and that can be included in the order.
RoR: Is that for all of the parties?
J: Yes. Is there anything further?
RoR: The standard authorisation expires 7 days from now. I assume the court will be satisfied with me including in the order that it will be extended by a further 7 days?
J: Yes do that. Is there anything further?
RoR: No, Your Honour.
J: Then I will see you all at 3pm on 12th June. Good bye.
The judge and Rory O’Ryan seemed to leave the link at the same time, at just past 10:20am.
Reflections
After reflecting on this hearing, I felt a great deal of sympathy for Rory O’Ryan. He was, so to speak, up against it: the only barrister and therefore the only person in the judge’s (very hot) firing line. To say I didn’t envy him would be an understatement.
I don’t know where the other parties were – nobody acknowledged their absence so I assume everybody but this party had been excused from attendance. I had the distinct impression that the judge had only appeared on the link so she could give somebody a telling off, and I couldn’t help but wonder whether the reason was because I’d asked to observe. Perhaps if I’d not, this matter would have been dealt with in writing. After all, removing the case from the list is a potential consequence of not complying with the directions of the Practice Direction I referenced at the start of this blog but a reprimand is not.
That being said, the failure to file the bundle with the court, meaning that the judge could not be properly prepared, resulted in an hour of the court’s valuable time being wasted.
I do understand the reasoning given for not filing the bundle at the end of the previous week. However, that strikes me as a decision that’s so obviously wrong that I wonder why it was the course of action chosen. (Maybe late filing of bundles is much more common a problem than is apparent to observers. Maybe many judges have just become resigned to it and we are not exposed to their concerns.)
I always tell my undergraduate students that it’s better to come to a seminar having done half the reading than not to come at all. Watching this hearing, I couldn’t help but think that this was a bit like somebody not having done the reading, not attending the seminar, and hoping to still do well in the exam.
Would it not have been better to file an incomplete bundle and then update the court with developments at the start of the hearing? I’ve seen plenty of barristers say something like, “document X isn’t in the bundle in front of you because it was filed late”. Why couldn’t that have happened here?
Although I have yet to receive them, I’m grateful to the judge for ordering that I should be provided with the position statements. Hopefully that will make it much easier to follow the hearing when this case returns to court at 3pm on Thursday 12th June
Daniel Clark is a member of the core team of the Open Justice Court of Protection Project. He is a PhD student in the Department of Politics & International Relations at the University of Sheffield. His research considers Iris Marion Young’s claim that older people are an oppressed social group. It is funded by WRoCAH. He is on LinkedIn, X @DanielClark132 and Bluesky @clarkdaniel.bsky.social.
Promoting Open Justice in the Court of Protection 