Lifting Of Reporting Restrictions Refused To Father Of Protected Party

The Court of Protection’s role is to make decisions on behalf of people who lack capacity. Given that the Protected Party at the centre of the proceedings has no mandate to bring those proceedings personally and consequently, the parties involved will be anonymised. The Court imposes strict reporting restrictions, preventing the details or the identities of those involved from being published in the press.  

Tony Hickmott case

Recently, the Court of Protection has in two notable cases made orders lifting the reporting restrictions. The first of these was in a case concerning an individual named Tony Hickmott, a disturbing example of an individual who had been improperly held in an institution for decades, and the local authority that had placed him there had been very sluggish in finding suitable alternatives, or allowing the Protected Party to return home to his family. The seriousness of the effects this had had on the Protected Party’s mental health was such that the Court allowed the case to be reported on, as it was deemed to be in the public interest to do so. The Court’s concern at the local authority’s approach mirrored the concerns of the Protected Party’s parents.

Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust v Verden case

The second such case (Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust v Verden [2022] EWCOP 4) involved a child who urgently needed a kidney donor. The Court deemed it to be in the Protected Party’s best interests for reporting restrictions to be lifted in the hope that it might result in a donor being found for the Protected Party. This was, in effect, a “life or death” scenario and the Court made the decision that the potential benefit to the Protected Party in finding a donor outweighed the detriment created by the breach of the Protected Party’s right to respect for private and family life.

LF v A NHS Trust & Ors case

In LF v A NHS Trust & Ors [2022] EWCOP 8, the Court refused to lift reporting restrictions when the Protected Party’s father made an application. The Protected Party – who was of majority age – was being kept in a children’s hospital and was suffering from a degenerative disorder affecting her central nervous system. The Court of Protection proceedings concerned where she should live on her discharge from the hospital, who should care for her, and who she should be able to see and Mr Justice Hayden had decided that she should be moved into a care home which could offer specialist care.

The Protected Party’s father had attempted to appeal against Mr Justice Hayden’s decision but was refused leave to do so. He was determined that the Protected Party should be discharged to her family and he had even begun a crowdfunding campaign to enable the family to buy an adapted vehicle to move the Protected Party around. Several celebrities had said that they would support this. The Protected Party’s father wanted the case to be reported in the press, with several newspapers showing interest in the story, and to promote the campaign to buy the adapted vehicle. He then applied to the Court for reporting restrictions to be lifted and used the Manchester University case as a precedent.

However, the Court refused to lift the reporting restrictions, deeming this not to be in the Protected Party’s best interests. Hayden J described the case as “…in many ways, the polar opposite of the facts of Manchester University NHS Trust” and noted that an online blog which gave rise to the outside interest in the case reflected the Protected Party’s father’s view of what was best for the Protected Party and his rejection of the Court’s earlier order. In essence, the Court appeared to come to the view that the Protected Party’s father’s intentions were rather self-serving and did not necessarily promote a solution that was in the Protected Party’s best interests.