The Court of Appeal has rejected an appeal by parents against an adoption order for their children after they highlighted a “procedural irregularity”.
The Family Court at Portsmouth approved an adoption plan for two children, a four-year-old boy, referred to by the courts as T, and a girl, two, known as F, late in 2025.
Lord Justice Baker at the Court of Appeal rejected separate appeals by both the children’s mother and father against care and placement orders made at the conclusion of care proceedings concerning the children.
The parents’ appeals, both of which were lodged out of time, had been considered by the court after it was found that the children’s permanence reports – a key aspect informing the decision about whether to place a child for adoption – were not served on the parents’ solicitors during proceedings in November 2025.
Prior to the start of the proceedings, T and F were living in the care of their mother, together with their half-brother, B, who is the mother’s child by a different father.
On 23 May 2025, the local authority filed an application for care orders in respect of all three children, having asserted that “the children were suffering, and likely to suffer, significant harm in their parents’ care as a result of being exposed to violence and other forms of domestic abuse inflicted by T and F’s father upon their mother, substance misuse by both parents, and, in the mother’s case, significant mental health problems.”
B was placed with his father in whose care he has remained ever since.
Interim care orders were made in respect of T and F, initially on the basis that the children remained in their mother’s care living in a refuge. In August 2025, however, they were removed and placed in foster care after the mother’s mental health deteriorated and she disclosed that, contrary to an agreement with the local authority, she had been using cocaine and drinking alcohol.
The parenting assessments of T and F’s parents each concluded that neither parent was able to meet the children’s needs. The assessments of members of the extended family and other friends as alternative carers for the children also reached negative conclusions.
Once a plan for adoption was approved, the child’s permanence reports were not served on the parents’ solicitors, however. No complaint about the failure to serve the child’s permanence reports was made by the solicitors and the failure to serve them was not drawn to the judge’s attention either at the Issues Resolution Hearing or at the final hearing, in December 2025.
During those hearings, the father opposed the local authority’s applications and sought the return of the children to his care, either immediately or over a period of time. The mother chose not to challenge the evidence, although it was stated on her behalf that she opposed the plans and hoped that the court would allow her more time to demonstrate that she could make the changes needed to care for the children.
On 28 January 2026, the mother filed a notice of appeal against the care and placement orders. On 9 February 2026, the father filed a separate notice of appeal against the orders. Both appeal notices were filed some weeks out of time.
Each appeal drew attention to the fact that the child’s permanence reports had been filed with the court but not served on them or their solicitors and asserted that this amounted to a serious procedural irregularity.
Lord Justice Baker granted the parents/ leave to appeal out of time and granted permission to appeal on one ground only, that the failure to serve the child’s permanence reports relating to the two children on the parents prior to the making of the placement order was a serious procedural irregularity.
Lord Justice Baker, Lady Justice Falk and Lord Justice Miles rejected the parents’ appeal on the basis that the adoption decision was not “unjust”.
In his judgment, Lord Justice Baker noted: “The crucial question, however, is whether, as a result of this irregularity, the decision to make placement orders was unjust. It is only in those circumstances that an appeal against a decision that is not otherwise wrong can be allowed.”
“If the court had based its decision to make placement orders on information that was in the child’s permanence reports that was not found elsewhere in the papers before the court to which all parties had access, I would have concluded that the decision was unjust. In this case, however, that is not what happened.”
“I therefore conclude that, although the failure to serve the child’s permanence reports was a serious procedural irregularity, it had no impact on the outcome of the proceedings. I do not accept the submission that, because of the life-changing significance of adoption, such a failure automatically renders the decision to make a placement order unjust.
He added: “In reaching that conclusion, however, I am not condoning the procedural error. In different circumstances, it could have led to a successful appeal and further delay in reaching a decision about the child’s future.”
