Centre for Child and Family Law Reform

The Centre is sponsored by The City Law School. The Centre’s purpose is to scrutinise existing family law and to facilitate reform where appropriate.

Our history

The Centre for Child and Family Law Reform (CCFLR) was set up in the 1990s under the chairmanship of the late Professor Hugh Bevan, Professor of Child Law at the University of Cambridge (and previously Head of the Law Department and Pro Vice-Chancellor at the University of Hull).

It was set up as a forum for discussion for practising and academic lawyers, in order to continue the family law work of the law reform society JUSTICE after the latter discontinued that work to concentrate on public law issues.

The CCFLR Committee is comprised of active and retired members of the judiciary, practitioners – both barristers and solicitors – and a small number of legal academics.

CCFLR and The City Law School

The CCFLR continues to be affiliated with The City Law School (formerly known as the Institute of Law).

The CCFLR Committee is currently chaired by Hannah Markham KC, who succeeded HH Michael Horowitz KC in July 2023, assisted by William Longrigg. Michael Horowitz continues as a member of the Committee.

City University Law School is represented on the Committee by Professor Carmen Draghici. Professor Draghici is a specialist in Human Rights Law with a particular interest in the interpretation and application of the ECHR to Family and Child Law in England and Wales.

CCFLR Committee members meet quarterly to discuss the latest developments in the field of child and family law in England and Wales and to formulate specific proposals for reform of the law and practice of family law in England and Wales.

Recent projects and impact

The CCFLR has submitted responses to consultations launched by the Law Commission, for example, on changes to the intestacy rules; the disclosure of prior domestic violence offences to new partners in order to prevent future crimes; the criminalisation of forced marriages; the removal of ‘fault’ from divorce procedures.

The CCFLR response to the Government’s consultation on the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme was quoted by the Home Office in its “Summary of Responses” of March 2012.

The CCFLR made recommendations on the conduct of proceedings concerning low-value financial claims upon divorce in cases where the parties are not legally represented, following fieldwork research in five Family Court centres in the Summer and Autumn of 2018, sponsored by the HEIF-KE Enterprise and Knowledge Exchange Fund.

The CCFLR has recently concluded an examination of the entrenched practice of treating child arrangements and financial/ property issues upon divorce separately, a practice which has no express foundation in statute or procedural Rules.

The Committee did not recommend statutory reform but is in the process of publicising proposals inviting the family law profession to adopt  an approach combining the two strands of family litigation imaginatively and flexibly whenever it is appropriate to do so in order to keep proceedings focussed, avoid delay and contain costs.

The Committee’s full Report is available on the Centre for Child and Family Law Research website.

In October 2023, the Committee adopted as its next Project a comprehensive review of the regime of costs in children and ancillary relief litigation. The objective of the Review will be to set out proposals to rationalise, simplify and reduce the burden of costs which are widely regarded as excessive.

Arbitration

The CCFLR has also contributed to the foundation of the Institute of Family Law Arbitrators (IFLA), a not-for-profit-organisation providing an alternative to court litigation for the resolution of family disputes involving financial and child arrangements, and actively participates in IFLA’s governance.

The arbitration mechanism put forward by IFLA was unanimously endorsed by the Court of Appeal in the case of ;Haley v Haley [2020] EWCA Civ 1369. The CCFLR is a stakeholder in IFLA and represented by its Chair at all meetings of the Advisory Committee.

Contact us

The CCFLR Committee may be contacted through its Honorary Secretary, Harry Nosworthy, at HN@4pb.com or 4PB, 6^th Floor, St Martin’s Court, 10 Paternoster Row, EC4M 7HP.

Related subjects

• Law.