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26 Nov 2008 : Column 1647W—continued
Children Act 1989
Mr. Bellingham: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice (1) how many Children Act proceedings he expects to be brought by local authorities in each of the next three years; [238576]
(2) how many Children Act proceedings were brought by local authorities on each of the last five years. [238577]
Bridget Prentice: The main recommendations from the 2006 Review of the Child Care Proceedings were implemented through two key reforms: revised statutory guidance issued to local authorities and the Public Law Outline. It was estimated this could lead to a reduction in the number of care and supervision applications under section 31 of the Children Act 1989 of between 8 per cent. and 13 per cent. per annum, brought about through better early engagement with families through use of initiatives such as Family Group Conferences and early identification of alternatives such as kinship care, as well as better prepared applications to court.
The following table shows the number of applications in Public Law cases in England and Wales from 2003 to 2007.
| Table 1: Family courts matters affecting children: Public law applications made in each tier of court 2003 to 2007( 1) —England and Wales | ||||
| Public law( 2) | ||||
| Family proceedings courts, ( 3,4) | County court( 5) | High court | Total | |
| Notes: 1. Figures relate to the number of children subject to each application. For example, an application relating to two children will be counted twice. 2. Public law cases cover the following applications brought by local authorities or an authorised person (currently only the NSPCC): care order, discharge of care order, substitute supervision order for a care order, supervision order, discharge of supervision order, contact with a child in care, authority to refuse contact with a child in care, education supervision order, child assessment orders, emergency protection order, extension of emergency protection order, discharge of emergency protection order, recovery order, parental responsibility order, section 8 orders (residence, contact, prohibited steps, specific issue) and special guardianship order. 3. Figures for Family Proceedings Courts prior to April 2007 are likely to be an undercount. A new method of data collection was introduced in April 2007 which has improved the coverage and completeness of data. Any comparison with figures prior to April 2007 may be affected by the improved data recording. 4. Special Guardianship Orders figures in the Family Proceedings Courts are only available for those courts which share premises and administrative systems with county courts. The total has therefore been estimated based on the proportion of the total public law and private law applications made in each tier of court. 5. Research undertaken on behalf of Ministry of Justice has identified that some cases that have transferred from the Family Proceedings Court to the County Court have been incorrectly recorded as new applications in the County Court, thus inflating the number of new applications (see Masson et al, 2008). Source: Family Proceedings Courts: HMCS FamilyMan and manual returns. County Court and High Court: HMCS FamilyMan. | ||||
Mr. Bellingham: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice (1) which 93 local authorities responded to the consultation on public law family fees expressing concern that the new court fees would be unaffordable; [238578]
(2) which 12 local authorities responded to the consultation on public law family fees expressing concern that children would be put at risk due to the increase in court fees; [238579]
(3) what the expected fee income of HM Courts Service for Children Act proceedings is in each of the next three years. [238580]
Bridget Prentice: It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before prorogation. I will write to the hon. Member once the information is available and place a copy of the letter in the Library of the House.
Community Legal Advice Centres
Mr. Bellingham: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice where each of the (a) Community Legal Advice Centres and (b) Community Legal Advice Networks is located. [238575]
Mr. Malik: Community Legal Advice (CLA) centres have opened in Gateshead, Leicester, Portsmouth, Derby and Hull. There are no Community Legal Advice networks yet. The Legal Services Commission (LSC) is in discussions with nine other local authorities on the possibility of jointly commissioning a service, either a centre or a network, that would be operational before April 2010. These are:
1. Barking and Dagenham
2. Cardiff, the Vale of Glamorgan and Bridgend
3. East Riding of Yorkshire
4. Gloucestershire
5. Manchester
6. Stockport
7. Sunderland
8. Wakefield
9. West Sussex
Community Orders
Chris Huhne: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what proportion of community sentences were breached in each of the last five years. [239245]
Maria Eagle: The following table shows the proportions of community sentences that terminated in England and Wales in each of the last five years for positive and negative reasons, including failing to comply with the order and conviction for further offences. Information specifically on the numbers or proportions of ‘breaches' which resulted in orders being continued and not terminated is not held centrally. The improvement shown in positive terminations for the community rehabilitation order reflects the fact that this is a pre Criminal Justice Act 2003 sentence and was only given for offences committed before 4 April 2005. Negative terminations tend to occur earlier in the life of an order, leaving a higher proportion of these orders to terminate successfully over the course of time. This does not apply to the community punishment order, which is still available for juvenile offenders.
The information contained in this table can be found in chapter 5 of Offender Management Caseload Statistics 2007 located online at:
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