Glossary: Public Law Outline

The process of taking children into care is being improved through a revision of a judicial protocol known as the Public Law Outline (PLO).

The PLO emphasises the importance of strong judicial case management throughout a case; of narrowing the issues in dispute and seeking to resolve these at a much earlier stage; of reducing the amount of written material and oral evidence so that practitioners can focus on the big issues in a case; and of introducing a pre-proceedings gate-keeping regime to ensure local authority cases are better assessed prior to an application to court being made. With more than 80% of applications to court currently lacking a core assessment, there is a long way to go to make the system operate as intended.

See: Community Care - How the Public Law Outline will improve case management and care proceedings

(Definition provided by tri.x)