Article 7 Composition and chairmen of family proceedings courts

The members of the panel shall meet as often as may be necessary but not less than twice a year to make arrangements connected with the sitting of family proceedings courts and to discuss questions connected with the work of those courts.

The justices to sit in each family proceedings court shall be chosen from the panel in such manner as the panel determine so as to ensure that section 66(2) and (3) of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1980 (which provides how a family proceedings court for the metropolitan area is to be constituted) is complied with (except where a single justice is authorised to discharge the functions of a magistrates' court).

A family proceedings court which does not include a stipendiary magistrate (whether sitting alone or as chairman) shall sit under the chairmanship of a justice for the inner London area being a person nominated by the Lord Chancellor to act as court chairman.

If at any sitting of a family proceedings court which does not include a stipendiary magistrate (whether sitting alone or as chairman), a chairman is available to act as chairman but considers that it would be appropriate for another member of the court to act as chairman at that sitting, he may nominate that member to act as chairman at the sitting provided that the chairman who makes the nomination sits as a member of the court throughout the sitting.

If at any sitting of a family proceedings court which does not include a stipendiary magistrate (whether sitting alone or as chairman), no justice nominated under paragraph (3) is available to act as chairman owing to illness or other emergency, any justice who is a member of the panel may, with the consent of the Lord Chancellor, act temporarily as chairman.