For Professionals
I have been named in a lot of Part 25 applications. Some of them read like the solicitor had the whole case in mind when they drafted them. Others read like they were pulled together at half past four on the day before filing, which, to be fair, is often exactly what happened. The difference between the two is not effort. It is knowing what the court is going to look at, and getting the right information out of the expert before you file rather than after the hearing.
This is a practical note on what goes into an application to instruct an independent social worker in children proceedings, what tends to go wrong, and what you should be asking me for before you put my name on anything.
Not whether an independent social work assessment would be useful. The test is narrower than that. Under section 13(6) of the Children and Families Act 2014, the court may give permission for expert evidence in children proceedings only if it is of the opinion that the evidence is necessary to assist the court to resolve the proceedings justly. Necessary. Not helpful, not thorough, not reassuring.
Section 13(7) then sets out what the court has regard to in reaching that view. The impact on the welfare of the child, including the impact of any examination or assessment. The issues to which the evidence would relate. The questions the court would need answered. What other evidence is already available. Who else could give the evidence. The impact on the timetable, the duration, and the conduct of the proceedings. The cost.
Read that list back and you will notice it is a checklist. Most applications answer three or four of those points and leave the rest for the judge to infer. The ones that go through without argument answer all of them, briefly, in roughly the order the statute sets them out.
Rule 25.7 of the Family Procedure Rules sets the minimum. The application notice must state the field in which the expert evidence is required, the name of the proposed expert where that is practicable, the issues to which the evidence is to relate, and whether the evidence could be obtained from a single joint expert. It then picks up the further matters set out in Practice Direction 25C.
In children proceedings there is an additional requirement that catches out more applications than anything else. You have to state why the evidence cannot properly be given by an officer of the service, by the local authority in accordance with its statutory duties, by another party, or by an expert already instructed in the proceedings.
That is the question that sinks applications. If the local authority has already completed a parenting assessment and the application says nothing about why a further one is needed, the judge is entitled to ask what has changed. There are perfectly good answers. The first assessment was completed before a fact-finding hearing that altered the factual landscape. The parent has a learning need that the original assessment did not accommodate and a specialist framework is required. The allocated worker has changed three times and the assessment leans on records rather than direct work. A capacity to protect assessment addresses a question the parenting assessment never asked. All of those are arguable. None of them argue themselves.
There is no rule requiring three. It is convention, in some courts it is local practice, and it exists because the court is weighing cost as part of the necessity test and wants to see that the choice was made on something more than habit.
What that means in practice is that whoever comes third on a list of three is often there to make the list look like a list. If you are going to name three, name three people who could genuinely do the work, and be ready to say why you have put them in that order. Availability within the timetable is a legitimate reason to prefer one over another. So is a specific accreditation. So is prior experience of the framework the court has directed.
Practice Direction 25B sets out what you have to obtain from the expert before the application is made. In substance it comes down to three things. That the work falls within my expertise. That I am available to do it within the timescale the court is working to. And what it will cost.
Practice Direction 25C then sets out what I have to be given before I can answer any of that properly. In practice the request usually arrives with the child's name, an assessment type, and a filing date, and nothing else. I can quote from that. The quote will be a guess.
What I actually need is the current case management order, the issues in dispute, the number of adults to be assessed and where they live, whether there has been a fact-finding hearing and what was found, whether an assessment has already been completed and by whom, and the date the report has to be filed rather than the date of the hearing. Give me that, and the figure I send back is the figure on the invoice.
Ask me for the hours as well as the total. The hours are what goes in the application and what the costs draftsman needs. Ask me for a start date, not only a turnaround. Response time and availability are different things, and only one of them affects your timetable. And ask for the CV. It should be attached to the application and it should be current. Mine sits on my website and I keep it up to date for exactly this reason.
If your client is publicly funded, the Legal Aid Agency has codified hourly rates for most expert types under the Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013, and independent social work is one of them. Where the proposed fee exceeds the codified rate, you apply for prior authority before the work is done. Prior authority is not a formality and it is not something to sort out afterwards. Without it, the shortfall is a risk your firm carries.
Where the cost is shared, say so in the application and say how. Four-way apportionment between the local authority and three represented parties is common, and it needs to be agreed and recorded rather than assumed. I have lost more time to unpicking an apportionment after filing than to almost anything else on the administrative side of this work.
The questions. Almost always the questions.
A good application has the letter of instruction questions drafted, or at least in outline, at the point it is filed. A poor one says the questions will follow. What then happens is that the court gives permission in principle, the questions get drafted by three parties by email over the following fortnight, and by the time the instruction reaches me I have lost two weeks of a timetable that was tight when it was set.
Draft the questions first. They are the assessment. If you want a view on capacity to protect, ask for a capacity to protect assessment and name the framework. If domestic abuse risk is the live issue, name it. If the court has directed a Form K assessment, say Form K rather than special guardianship assessment, because they are not the same piece of work and they are not the same number of hours.
I am happy to look at draft questions before they go in. It takes ten minutes and it costs nothing. I would far rather spend ten minutes at that stage than write a report that answers a question nobody actually needed.
The expert's CV. A written confirmation that the work is within their expertise. A start date and a filing date they have agreed to. The hours and the total. The funding position, including any prior authority application. The apportionment. And the questions in draft.
That is seven things, and six of them take one email to obtain. If you send that email before you draft the application rather than after the hearing, the application takes half the time to write and stands a much better chance of going through without an adjournment.
I have completed over 225 assessments and given oral evidence on more than 100 occasions, and I can tell you that the assessments that go well are almost always the ones where the scope was right at the start. The Part 25 application is where the scope gets set. It is worth the afternoon.
Last reviewed: September 2026
It is the application to the family court for permission to instruct an expert. In children proceedings the court may only give permission if the expert evidence is necessary to assist the court to resolve the proceedings justly, under section 13(6) of the Children and Families Act 2014.
There is no rule requiring three names. It is a widely followed convention, and local practice in some courts, because the court weighs cost as part of the necessity test and wants to see the choice was reasoned.
The case management order, the issues in dispute, the number of adults to be assessed and where they live, whether there has been a fact-finding hearing, whether an assessment has already been completed, and the filing date for the report. That produces a firm quote rather than an estimate.
Where the proposed fee exceeds the codified rate under the Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) Regulations 2013, prior authority must be sought before the work is done. It is not something to resolve after the report is filed.