Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 9
45th Report - Improving family court services for children
Published 12 Sep 2025
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Improving family court services for children All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
In December 2024, there were still over 4,000 children involved in public and private law proceedings which had been open for over 100 weeks.14 MoJ told us that by the end of March 2025, the number of those waiting for over 100 weeks had reduced by 48% for public law and 46% for private law, but did not specify compared to when. MoJ and HMCTS told us that reducing long-running cases over 100 weeks will continue to be a priority 8 C&AG’s Report, paras 1.6, 1.9, Figure 5 9 Qq 11, 13; C&AG’s Report, para 1.7 10 C&AG’s Report, para 1.9 11 Qq 12, 16 12 Q 28 13 Qq 12, 16, 20 14 Qq 13, 19; C&AG’s Report, para 1.9 10 indicator for them going forward, but they recognised there is more to do. MoJ said that in reality it will always be challenging to ensure that there are no 100-week-plus cases in the system.15
From: Public Accounts Committee, 45th Report - Improving family court services for children (HC 883), 12 September 2025
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 4 June 2026 (deadline 12 November 2025).