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Pilots – Court of Protection Handbook
The Case Management Pilot will start on 1 September, to run until 31 August 2017 (alongside the s.49 Pilot and the extended Transparency Pilot, both discussed further below).[1]
The Case Management Pilot can be found here. It introduces three distinct pathways for COP proceedings: 1) a Property and Affairs pathway, 2) a Health and Welfare pathway, and 3) a hybrid pathway for cases that have elements of both. The expectations of practitioners will be different depending upon which pathway is engaged. Common to each, though, is an expectation of much greater ‘front-loading’ and cooperation to narrow the issues.
The Case Management Pilot is accompanied by a revised set of Rules which foreshadow a re-numbering of the Rules that is anticipated as part of the second tranche of rules changes (moving to the same model as in the CPR and FPR). For ease of reference, all the Rules that will apply for purposes of the Pilot are set out in an annex – with suitably highlighted amendments – to the Pilot practice direction. They are also found collected together on the Court of Protection Handbook website here. There are six Pilot Parts:
Pilot Part 1: the overriding objective, including the participation of P, heightened duties upon the court and upon parties, and new duties upon both legal representatives and litigants in person;
Pilot Part 2: interpretation and general provisions;
Pilot Part 3: managing the case;
Pilot Part 4: hearings;
Pilot Part 5: court documents;
Pilot Part 15: experts.
As these parts cover the majority of relevant matters that arise during the life of an application, the intention is that practitioners (and the judiciary) will have to do the minimum of cross-referencing to the current iteration of the Rules during the life of the Pilot. However, an unfortunate consequence of the fact that for reasons beyond the control of the ad hoc Rules Committee the renumbering of the Rules cannot take place at present is that there will be parallel Rules for the life of the Pilot depending on whether cases are within or outside the Pilot. This means, for instance, that Rule 3A representatives are actually Pilot Rule 1.2A representatives in cases on the Case Management Pilot.
Before highlighting the key points of the three pathways, it is important to note the types of applications which the Pilot will not affect, which include: uncontested applications, applications for statutory wills and gifts, applications relating to serious medical treatment and deprivation of liberty applications (both Re X applications and s.21A applications). However, even for such cases, we strongly suggest that it is prudent to proceed in any case on the basis of any stricter obligation/test that would apply if the case were on the Pilot. If the Case Management Pilot achieves its aim of changing the culture of the Court of Protection, then it is likely that the judiciary will seek to follow its spirit even where its letter does not apply.
It should also be noted that the intention is that the Case Management Pilot sits alongside and does not displace the Transparency Pilot, so the expectation will be that all of the hearings noted below, with the express exception of the Dispute Resolution Hearing provided for in the property and affairs pathway, will be listed according to the Transparency Pilot rules as regards public/media attendance.
An important change that is introduced by the Case Management Pilot is a revised Part 15 on expert evidence. Crucially, the test for permission has been revised in COPR Pr121 to make it more stringent. The court’s duty is now to restrict expert evidence to that which is necessary to assist the court to resolve the issues in the proceedings, and by COPR Pr 121(2) the court may only give permission to file or adduce expert evidence if it is satisfied that it is both necessary and cannot otherwise be provided. Further, the court must now in deciding whether to give permission to file or adduce expert evidence have specific regard by COPR Pr123(2A) to (a) the issues to which the expert evidence would relate; (b) the questions which the expert would answer; (c) the impact which giving permission would be likely to have on the timetable, duration and conduct of the proceedings; (d) any failure to comply with any direction of the court about expert evidence; and (e) the cost of the expert evidence. Additionally, by para 4.5(m), the Case Management Pilot Practice Direction provides that for cases on the welfare pathway, the court must at the case management hearing actively consider whether a section 49 report (or a report from a Rule 3A/PR r1.2 representative) could achieve a better result than the use of an expert.
The s.49 Pilot also starts on 1 September, to run until 31 August 2017. The Practice Direction applies both to orders made under s.49 MCA by the COP of its own motion and – more importantly – to orders sought by parties. The Practice Direction is accompanied by a draft order. It recognises, in essence, that s.49 reports are an extremely important part of the COP’s armoury when it comes to information gathering, but that they must be deployed:
An unofficial version of the template s.49 order in Word form is to be found here.
The Transparency Pilot has been extended to run until 31 August 2017. We hope in due course that a formal report as to the reasoning will be published, but for present purposes practitioners – and indeed the judiciary – should note the following changes to the Pilot Order (which is available here, including in unofficial Word form):
An addition to paragraph 5A (i.e. those bound by the order) to make express that it binds “all persons who are provided with or by any means obtain documents and information arising from this application;”
An addition to paragraph 6 (concerning anonymisation of the transcript of hearings/judgments/orders), making clear that a confidential schedule should be provided with the necessary identification (and a copy of the order) to any person who needs to know the identity of P and/or others anonymised, for instance for purposes of complying with an order for disclosure of documents/information relating to P;
A considerable simplification of the requirements relating to anonymisation of documents. Because – so far – very few hearings have been attended by anyone other than the parties, the initially cautious approach, which required all core documents to be anonymised, has been relaxed. There is now no requirement that this is to be done; rather the court, by new paragraph 7, may at any time give such directions as it thinks fit (including directions relating to anonymisation, payment, use, copying, return and the means by which a copy of a document or information may be provided) concerning the provision of information or copies of documents put before the court and the terms on which they are to be provided to any person who attends an attended hearing (and who is not already allowed to be given a copy of a document under PD13A – i.e. for such purposes as receiving advice or making complaints to relevant bodies).
Tor Butler-Cole of 39 Essex Chambers had previously prepared an unofficial easy read version of the Pilot Order, and we understand that an updated version to reflect the provisions of the amended Order will be forthcoming.
It should be noted, finally, that the PD extending the Transparency Pilot did so in such a fashion that it is now easier to update the Pilot Order, and practitioners should therefore make sure to ensure that they are using the current version, which will always be found here.
[1] What follows is an updated version of the note that appeared in the March 2016 39 Essex Chambers newsletter, and originally appeared in the August 2016 Newsletter. Alex as a member of the ad hoc Rules Committee has been involved in developing the Pilot. As before, this note does not represent an official comment upon behalf of the Rules Committee.
Author aruckkeenePosted on 16 August 2016 Categories Court of Protection RulesTags Case management, Pilots, transparency