Latest statistics show children cases taking less time
The Ministry of Justice has published its latest quarterly statistics for the work of the Family Court, for the period April to June 2025.
The statistics contain some good news regarding the speed with which the court is dealing with children cases, both public law cases involving social services, and private law cases concerning disputes between parents over arrangements for their children.
As to public law cases, the average time for a care or supervision case to reach disposal was 38 weeks in April to June 2025, down 3 weeks compared to the same quarter in 2024.
Care cases are supposed to be dealt with within 26 weeks, but many are not. In the quarter just 36% of cases were disposed of within that time limit, although this was up 3% more than the same period in 2024.
As to private law cases, the average time for them to reach the final order was 39 weeks during April to June 2025, which was a reduction of nearly 4 weeks compared to the same period in 2024.
This welcome reduction is part of a slow but steady downward trend in the time that private law cases are taking on average. The trend began in the fourth quarter of 2023, when cases were taking more than 44 weeks on average.
As for divorces, the news is not quite so good. In April to June 2025, the mean average time from the divorce application to the conditional divorce order was 41 weeks, which was up 1 week from the same quarter in 2024. And the mean average time from the application to the final divorce order was 69 weeks, which was up 6 weeks from the equivalent quarter in 2024.
Interestingly, the statistics show that more couples are choosing to make the divorce application jointly, something that has only been possible since the introduction of no-fault divorce in 2022. There were 7,289 joint applications made during April to June 2025, which was 28% of the total number of applications, up 3% from the same period of 2024.
Lastly, the statistics give an indication of how busy the family courts have been. They show that 65,709 new cases were started in the family courts in April to June 2025, which was up 2% on the same quarter in 2024. This was due to increases in public law, financial remedy and private law children cases. However, there were decreases in adoption and divorce case starts.
The Ministry of Justice usually also publish quarterly statistics for legal aid, including figures for family mediation. However, they have not done so for the quarter April to June 2025 due to insufficient data availability, following a cyber-attack on the Legal Aid Agency’s IT system earlier this year.
You can find the Family Court Statistics here here.
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