Court of Protection Mediation Scheme

A practitioner-led nationwide pilot mediation scheme is being run from 1 October 2019, to evaluate the impact of mediation on Court of Protection proceedings.    

The aim of mediating a dispute that has been issued in the Court of Protection is to explore whether the parties can reach an agreement about what is in P’s best interests, and put this before the Court for approval (so the agreement becomes a Court order), rather than proceed to a contested trial. This means that the parties must agree firstly, on the issues in dispute and secondly, about what information from the confidential mediation can be shared with the Court.

While mediation is used to resolve disputes where proceedings have been issued in the Court of Protection, there has been little research into the effectiveness of it. However, in 2017 initial research findings on CoP mediation in the UK resulted in a working group being set up with a view to establishing a COP mediation scheme.  Mediations under the scheme will be conducted by accredited mediators, in accordance with the scheme guide.

It is anticipated that the scheme will run for around a year to eighteen months (start date 1 October 2019). It will be formally evaluated by academics at the University of Essex, led by Dr Jaime Lindsey.

For more details of the scheme, see here.

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