Which Local Authority Has Care Order Responsibility?

Plymouth City Council v C and another (CA TLR 21 March)

It was regrettable that the message in Northamptonshire County Council v Islington Borough Council [1999] 2 FLR 881 had not been sufficiently clearly understood to prevent this litigation, where there was no dispute at all between two local authorities as to who should carry primary statutory responsibility. These issues should not be litigated at all at public expense unless truly exceptional circumstances demanded that expenditure. It was plainly open to the judge to hold that a new-born baby was incapable of ordinary residence apart from her mother, from whose body she had so recently severed. She was necessarily dependent on the residence of her mother and that finding was upheld without the slightest hesitation. Section 31 (8) of the Children Act 1989 provides that ‘the local authority designated in a care order must be – (a) the authority within whose area the child is ordinarily resident…’ while s105 of the Act prescribes periods to be disregarded in determining the ‘ordinary residence’ of a child for the purposes of the Act. To determine which local authority has primary statutory responsibility for a child subject to a care order and connected with more than one area, s31(8) and s105(6) of the Act are to be construed so that the child’s ordinary area of residence is the area of residence immediately prior to any period to be disregarded. in the case of a newly born baby the mother’s residence was the baby’s ordinary residence of dependency.