Chambers has a dozen members with expertise in advising, drafting and appearing in Court of Protection proceedings. They range from 2 silks, through a number of senior juniors to the more junior end of Chambers. Chambers seeks to ensure that it has strength, quality and breadth of experience to provide a centre of excellence in this field.
In Court of Protection work chambers has developed expertise in particular in advising, drafting and appearing in welfare cases, and in particular but not exclusively for local authorities. On the strength of our growing reputation chambers’ social services database now contains in excess of 200 solicitors.
Members have acted in a wide range of Court of Protection disputes, ranging from substantial and sensitive and or novel cases to fact based arguments on best interests. Issues litigated include:
- capacity to consent to sex, sterilisation and contraception
- questions of marriage and separation
- cross examination of experts on capacity
- Capacity and the relevance of the availability of help on decision making
- The Family Court’s inherent jurisdiction to come to the aid of the vulnerable
- medical intervention
- choice of residence
- best interests and care
- cross examination of sexual abusers
- DoL
- costs and damages
- detailed cross-examination of experts
We have the experience in chambers to be able to deal with urgent applications and to draft at very short notice.
We also have experience in the several surrounding areas of law which assist our clients in this area of work. All members of Chambers are grounded in public law principles. Many have specialism in related fields: adult social services and community care; children’s services; judicial review; local authority decision making; governance issues and charging and other budgetary issues.
The clerks are able to provide the appropriate level of expertise for all types of Community Care and Court of Protection cases across the range of local government and NHS clients and on occasion for private individuals.