Tina Cook KC acted for the first respondent mother in judgment clarifying who should pay experts fees in family cases as between the LAA and a Local Authority

Tina Cook KC acted for the first Respondent mother before the President of the Family Division in a case brought by the London Borough of Barnet to seek clarification as to who should pay experts fees where the LAA was only prepared to sanction payment by the legally aided parties at a lower rate, leaving a short-fall in the overall fee.

The court took into account the recently amended (April 2025) ‘Guidance on the Remuneration of Expert Witnesses in Family Cases’. Those regulations now make it clear that it is not the intention of the LAA that local authorities should make up a shortfall in expert fees.

The court endorsed the general principles propounded by the “Experts group” of the ‘President’s Experts Working Group’. The steps within the general principles should ensure that an expert is only to be instructed at a rate outside the prescribed rate or in excess of the prescribed hours where to do so is justified by some ‘exceptional reason’, and that, when applying for prior authority, the LAA has been supplied with full information justifying that decision. The judgment sets out best practice for the wording of orders to achieve such payment by the LAA.

This should lead to a very substantial reduction in the number of cases in which there is any question of a local authority covering a short-fall in expert fees in public law children cases.

Re K and Re S judgment

16th Apr 2025

Tina Cook KC

Call 1988 | Silk 2011