Plans to publish family court judgments online may be scaled back following a review of a pilot project which questioned whether there was any ‘real benefit’ in reporting every case.

The £10,000 pilot test was carried out by The Ministry of Justice on the feasibility of issuing written judgments in certain types of family case and making anonymised judgments available through the British and Irish Legal Information Institute website.

It ran between November 2009 and December 2010 at Cardiff and Wolverhampton County and Magistrates’ Courts, and Leeds Magistrates’ Court, and captured 165 cases, most of which were public law Children Act cases, reports The Law Society Gazette.

The pilot was set up in response to the recommendations of the MoJ’s consultation paper Confidence and Confidentiality: openness in the family courts – a new approach, published in June 2007, and was a prerequisite to the implementation of part 2 of the Children School and Families Act 2010, which will allow greater freedom to report on family court proceedings.

The review examined the views of the judiciary, legal advisers, magistrates and court staff in the five pilot courts. It found that, while there was support for greater transparency and better public understanding of the family justice system, there were concerns about the protection of the privacy of the families involved.

There were also practical concerns about the cost of funding the scheme at a time of financial constraints, and that the volume of material produced on the website would be difficult to navigate.

Legal advisers and judges reported that the work arising from the pilot added to their workload.

The review revealed that no increase in media interest had been observed as a result of the pilot, and said that all those involved in the pilot seemed ‘unsure’ of the value to the public at large.

However, members of the judiciary highlighted the benefit for children of being able to access the filed judgment as adults.

The review concluded: ‘It is a matter of debate whether there is any real benefit in a national rollout which would include each and every case falling within the criteria, as tested in the pilot, or whether the cases to be published might be sampled in some way.’

It suggested allowing judicial discretion to publish only those cases ‘worthy of noting publicly’ or where the parties or the media requested publication, which would reduce the burden on the judiciary, legal advisers and court staff caused by the anonymisation process.

The MoJ will consider whether to roll out the scheme on a more limited scale, as highlighted by the report.