I have not had much success trying to observe hearings remotely in the Court of Protection. Lots of administrative issues, particularly with communication between myself, the regional Court of Protection Hubs and the courts (usually family or county courts) where the Court of Protection sits.

But I am not going to give up. I have decided to start early (2 days before a scheduled hearing) and see if I can be lucky enough to pick a hearing which is not vacated (cancelled) before I get to attend.

So I logged in to Courtserve (an account is free to create), chose County Courts from the left hand menu and then in the middle column under the red paragraph clicked on

Court of Protection lists

And the first entry which caught my eye was an entry for Caernarfon Daily 31/01/24.

The reason for this was that I was born in Liverpool and mum, who had been evacuated from Liverpool to Bangor during the war, had a school friend still in Bangor. And we had done a day trip to see Caernarfon Castle when I was probably about 10 years old.

So doing a remote visit to the Courts in Caernarfon seemed sort of appropriate.

Now I have a database where I record Court of Protection hearings, so I set about entering the details of that hearing on 31 January in to my database. This automatically updates a map which I can pull up any time. I can either call up a map of ALL of the entries in my COP database like this

OR I can select a specific date and then click on the pin to see the details of hearings at that location - thus

Now, being a lazy person (not really, but I hate typing thing twice) I have automated the sending of an email to the chosen Court asking for permission to observe. Celia from the Open Justice Court of Protection Project or on X (formerly Twitter) at @OpenJusticeCoP [fantastic project - really well worth an hour or two reading their blogs!] gave me a template for a request email, and by clicking on the Case number underlined and highlighted in Blue (13991911-02) an email to the correct email address for the Court and with Subject and Content automatically populated appears, ready for me to fill in my mobile number and other contact details and send it off to the Court.

Here is an example email:

SUBJECT: Observer request - case: 13991911-02 PW before Her Honour Judge W J Owen at 11:00 on Wednesday 31 January 2024 in The County Court and The Family Court at Caernarfon

Dear Court Staff,

Please may I observe case: 13991911-02 PW before Her Honour Judge W J Owen at 11:00 on Wednesday 31 January 2024 in The County Court and The Family Court at Caernarfon.

A link for a video hearing can be sent to this email address or my phone number is [mobile].

I confirm that you have my permission to share my email address with representatives for the parties for the purposes of being sent the transparency order and position statements.

I just change [mobile] to my mobile number and add a regards Peter signature and my full name, mobile number and email address at the end and send it off.

Now that was the easy bit!

I left it until about 4 hours later and then tried to call the Regional Hub to check that they had received and were actioning my request. Only problem - the advertised phone number was reporting - "not possible to connect your call". So a bit of sleuthing - I tracked down a switchboard number for the Court and tried that, selecting option 2 for Family matters. Success! an answer at 4:30 pm.

Sorry! Court of Protection staff have gone home, but if you call back tomorrow morning on the same number, I can put you through to the Court of Protection team and you can let them know their number is not working. A really helpful answer - from the Family team at the Court. Many thanks.

So there we have it - stage one of finding a Court of Protection hearing to observe. More updates tomorrow when I get to speak to the Court of Protection team, and find out what progress with my request.