New Family Court data has revealed that divorce applications are on the downturn whilst there has also been a decrease seen in both domestic violence remedy applications and orders made.
Government data released yesterday, has shown that between January to March 2024 there were 27,908 applications made for divorce, down 11% on the equivalent quarter in 2023. There were 21,662 final orders granted under the new divorce law, up 19% from the same period last year.
The number of domestic violence remedy order applications decreased by eight per cent compared to the equivalent quarter in 2023, while the number of orders made decreased by six per cent over the same period. Adoption applications have decreased while the number of orders have increased. In January to March 2024 there were 1,037 adoption applications, down five per cent on the equivalent quarter in 2023. However, the number of adoption orders issued increased by two per cent to 1,090.
Increase in deprivation of liberty applications and orders made under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 included 2,022 applications under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 relating to deprivation of liberty in January to March 2024, up 30% on the equivalent quarter in 2023 to the highest level in the time series. Orders increased by 40% in the latest quarter compared to the same period last year. An increase in timeliness across all types of grants of representation saw probate grants taking approximately 11 weeks (mean average) to be issued after the application was submitted during January to March 2024, up just over two weeks on the equivalent quarter in 2023.
The rollout of reform in family courts has introduced a new data management system, Core Case Data (CCD), to collect family data. As each service area undergoes reform, existing cases stay on the legacy system FamilyMan (FM) until they are disposed or closed, while new cases are recorded on CCD with some key details copied back to FM.
Currently, family public law (FPL) is undergoing a reform process. However, not all details are copied across for FPL (such as substantive orders other than final). Initial work has recently been completed to amalgamate both FM and CCD, but additional work is required to process the data required for this bulletin. As such, several published data series have been removed from Q1 (Jan-Mar) 2022 onwards unless otherwise stated:
- The total number of public law disposals
- The number of orders granted and children involved in orders granted by order type
- The number of public law cases started indicated as High Court from Q3 in 2022
- Care and supervision proceedings timeliness
- Overall public law timeliness
- The number of placement order applications from Q4 (Oct-Dec) 2022 (Table 18). As a result, the total number of cases started and the total number of applications under the Adoption and Children Act 2002 are not provided
- The total number of adoption cases disposed are not provided.
It is intended that these series will be reinstated in a future release of Family Court Statistics Quarterly (FCSQ).
Data for divorce hearings for Q2 (Apr-Jun) 2022 onwards (Table 13) also cannot be maintained due to the capability of collecting the hearings data for new divorce law not yet being available and the limited reasons for contesting a divorce case within the new law.
Judicial Separations has been removed from Q2 (Apr-Jun) 2023 (Table 12) due to issues with separately identifying the cases on CCD.
A statistician has commented saying: “During January to March 2024 there were fewer cases starting than in the same period a year earlier, driven mainly by matrimonial matters, and the number of cases disposed for matrimonial matters and Children Act (both public and private law) also decreased during this period.
In the latest quarter, time to first disposal for adoption and private law cases decreased compared to the equivalent period last year, whilst the time taken for divorce and financial remedy cases increased. There were a record number of probate grants issued by the Probate Service in January to March 2024 (70,520). The average time for all grant types from application submission to grant issue stands at around 13 weeks in the same period.
“In January to March 2024, there were record numbers of applications seen in the Office of the Public Guardian and for Deprivation of Liberty for adults made under the Mental Capacity Act 2005.”
During January to March 2024, there were decreases in several case types compared to the same quarter in the previous year: matrimonial, domestic violence and public law cases; at the same time there have been increases in private law and financial remedy case starts.
Over the same period, closed cases reaching a final disposal have decreased in public law (18%), private law (8%) and matrimonial (8%) cases. However, there was an increase in domestic violence (7%) and financial remedy (6%) case disposals (Table 1).
One Response
Perhaps the data is not representative of the true number of domestic abuse, because of the unbelievable number of judges who have not yet undertaken training in DA/DV/CC/SA/CSA?
The fact that lawyers and professionals advise victims to avoid reporting their violent or abusive partners to the courts or the authorities, gives a clear indication that the data is wholly inaccurate.
It staggers belief that in this day and age victims are still being ignored and children continue to be placed with the abusers!