Family Division president praises solicitors and family drug courts as he confirms six-month notice
The president of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane, has given six months’ notice to step down from his role, telling MPs about the vital contribution of solicitors and the benefits of family drug and alcohol courts.
Appearing before the House of Commons Justice Committee during a session on family court reform, Sir Andrew confirmed he had formally notified officials of his intention to retire from the position.
He told MPs that the withdrawal of legal aid had increased pressure on the family courts and contributed to the backlog of cases.
“The volume [of cases] went up after legal aid was largely removed because litigants in person were not meeting solicitors who were saying ‘come on, you do not want to go to court about that’,” he said. “The perception in the public may be that the lawyers were generating the work but I think the statistics show it was the other way around.”
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Sir Andrew also underlined the value of family drug and alcohol courts (FDACs), which he described as a key element of a problem-solving approach to family justice.
“All the research shows for every £1 spent reaps £2 or £3 benefit,” he said, adding that “haphazard” funding arrangements had turned access to such courts into a “postcode lottery.”
He told the committee that family drug and alcohol courts provided a crucial opportunity for early intervention.
“It does occur to me that the social benefit of using the court as a moment in someone’s life for intervention, with the judge as a parental figure, does achieve massive change for those individuals — their lives turn around,” he said.
Sir Andrew noted that the benefits extended beyond the Ministry of Justice’s remit, observing that other departments such as the Home Office, the Department of Health, and the Department for Education had a shared interest in the outcomes achieved through family drug and alcohol courts.
“The MoJ do their bit by providing the courtroom and the judge to be the facility, but it is the Home Office that must have interest in this, the Department of Health, the Department of Education,” he said. “But I am a judge, I could not have possibly said what I have just said.”
He explained that many FDAC cases involved families affected by domestic abuse.
“Although it says on the tin drugs and alcohol, I understand that if not every case then nearly every case, an underlying feature is domestic abuse,” he said. “These individuals are serially victims of horrid sustained domestic abuse and turning to drugs and alcohol is a coping mechanism.”
“The professionals working in FDAC say we often have to address the domestic abuse first before we can allow the individual to have confidence to move on. Well, if that is right, that it is a domestic abuse facility to address domestic abuse, then all the more reason for it to be taken seriously in the campaign that the government rightly has on focusing on violence against women and girls,” he added.
During the committee session, Labour MP Sarah Russell asked how plans were progressing to find his replacement.
Sir Andrew responded:
“There will need to be a Judicial Appointments Commission competition to find my successor and that will start, and I have given six months’ notice on the understanding the successor will be identified before that period.”
Sir Andrew, who is 71, has served as president of the Family Division since 2018.
In his Substack column published on Wednesday, legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg named Lord Justice Cobb, 63, as the current favourite to succeed him.
Sir Andrew’s comments come amid wider discussions on family justice reform and renewed efforts to reduce waiting times in family courts, where caseloads have risen in recent years following reductions to legal aid funding.