Under the Court of Protection Rules 2017 the general rule is that Court of Protection proceedings are to be heard in private unless the Court made an Order permitting other persons to attend. It is a contempt of court to publish information relating to Court of Protection proceedings where the Court was sitting in private, unless the Court ordered otherwise.  The Court can order that a hearing be heard in public where there is good reason for doing so.  The reasons for that regime were that those with mental capacity could deal with their private affairs confidentially and in private and those who lacked mental capacity should be entitled to the same privacy.  The provision encapsulated the rights, under ECHR art 8, of persons who were vulnerable and whose involvement in Court proceedings arose from their vulnerability, not their choice.  However, there will be cases where the public interest in an individual case outweighs the privacy considerations.  The normal practice is for the Court to make a transparency order for the hearing to be in public, of its own motion, but with reporting restrictions to prevent the identification of the person lacking capacity, unless it appeared that there was good reason for not doing so.  So held in W v P (2025) EWCOP 11 (T3).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 25th, 2025 at 2:51 pm and is filed under Judicial Control, Liability and Litigation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.