“Great service, resourceful and helpful.”
Mark is a Chartered Legal Executive and has exclusively practised family law for nearly 30 years. Much of Mark’s work has centred around proceedings concerning children. He has particular expertise in cases where Social Services are involved and has spent time working within the legal departments of local authorities.
He also represents parents facing Local Authority intervention and has spent a period of time as a specialist Court advocate.
Outside of work he is a keen user of the gym, plays jazz saxophone and sings and performs with a local light opera company.
His work includes:
- Representing a father who had been addicted to amphetamines for 25 years. Assisted and supported the process of detoxification within court proceedings which led to the child being reunited with the parents.
- Mark played an active role in cases that formed the foundation of the approach taken by courts today in interpreting and applying the Children Act 1989.
- Representing a local authority in the London High Court to get a child with cancer blood products for a medical procedure to save her life where the parents refused consent on religious grounds. After a contested hearing the High Court granted the application authorising the treatment.
- Acting in a high profile case representing the mother in a case where her baby had sustained multiple injuries. Both parents blamed each other and there was a simultaneous criminal investigation and a high level of press interest in the case at local and national level. The resolution of the case involved complex and disputed medical evidence being heard before the court.
- Representing a mother in a highly complex international case. She had previously been a high-profile international banker but had developed issues with substance misuse and mental health. It involved obtaining evidence from Germany and dealing with the German courts as the child’s father was a German national and a habitual residence dispute.
- Representing a father in his pursuit to be reunited with his daughter. His history of issues meant that he had all but been written off by the local authority. Successfully argued for an independent assessment of the father, which was positive, assisted him in obtaining support with the issues identified and succeeded in obtaining an Order reuniting him with his baby daughter.
- Representing a mother in a complex and long-running case where the approach of the local authority was strongly challenged leading to the social work team backing down and changing their plan for the child on three occasions, and independent assessments being ordered by the court.
