Fixing Family Courts

The family court system should be a place of safety, protection, and swift resolution for children and families. Instead, after years of Conservative under-funding and systemic neglect, private and public family proceedings are plagued by severe delays and structural blind spots regarding domestic abuse.

Data from the Family Court Reporting and Reform Mechanism (FCRRM) reveals that domestic abuse is present in 73% of family court hearings, yet survivors of coercive control and violence continue to face a system that struggles to protect them. Meanwhile, local authority public law cases face chronic backlogs - with nearly a third of hearings cancelled before they even take place, leaving vulnerable children in limbo.

Liberal Democrats believe the welfare and safety of the child must be paramount. Today, our members passed a decisive policy to reform family justice, roll out proven non-adversarial court models, and root out domestic abuse risks from court decisions.

Our policy includes a number of measures to achieve this, including:

• Working to ensure those involved in private law proceedings have specialist training in domestic abuse.
   
• Facilitating greater data-collection and transparency when it comes to family court judgements so that systemic problems can be identified earlier and action taken to remedy them. 
   
• Ensuring that efforts to reform the family justice system go ahead as planned and include a timeline for implementation with clear milestones and mandatory progress reporting. 

Reforming family justice is not about winning legal arguments - it is about keeping children safe, supporting victims of abuse, and giving families swifter, more compassionate resolutions.

The Liberal Democrats are committed to delivering a family court system that truly puts children first.