Subject Access Request to Cafcass

Cafcass covers England only. The Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 defines its remit as children "other than children ordinarily resident in Wales", so the test is where the child lives rather than where the court sits. Wales is Cafcass Cymru, which sits within the Welsh Government and is a separate data controller. Scotland uses court-appointed child welfare reporters, and Northern Ireland has the Children's Court Guardian Agency for Northern Ireland. A subject access request gets you your own personal data. It is not a route to the Cafcass report or to the court file. The report most families are looking for is the one the court asks Cafcass to write about a child's welfare when a case goes beyond the first hearing, known as a section 7 report, and it is evidence within the proceedings rather than something a data request can release. Cafcass's own guidance for parents says the Family Court Adviser shares their thinking and recommendations with you before filing the report with the court, and that in most cases you will be able to see the report before the hearing. Its subject access policy adds that the Family Procedure Rules "prevent Cafcass from sharing any information with non-parties that has been collected for the purpose of the proceedings without the permission of the court". If you are not a party, Cafcass will tell you what it holds and give you the court reference number, and you then apply to the court that heard the case for permission to see documents from it. If you are a party, you should already have been served with the report through the proceedings — ask your solicitor or the court before asking Cafcass. A request is also not a way to challenge what a report says. Cafcass will not treat a disagreement with an assessment or a recommendation as a complaint: it says that as the report is evidence in the proceedings, "any challenges to the content (other than purely factual errors) must be made through the court process", and that if you disagree with the recommendations you should make sure the judge knows. Complaints about how Cafcass behaved go to Cafcass and then to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. Cafcass also asks people not to submit AI-generated complaint text, because it tends to cite policies and process "stages" that no longer exist and slows the reply down. A Cafcass file is about several people at once — the children, the other parent, family members and professionals — so expect material about other people to be withheld or redacted. Cafcass is not your local authority. A family court adviser is not a council social worker, and if the records you want were made by children's services rather than by Cafcass, that is a request for social services records to the council instead. Where a child has been treated by the NHS, health records follow a different route again. Cafcass publishes two different route lists. Its subject access page, aimed at adults, gives the online contact form, post to Coventry, telephone and calling in person, and no email address. Its page for children and young people adds SAR@cafcass.gov.uk, a freephone Hear to Listen line on 0808 175 3333, and a postal address at Cafcass Feedback, Cafcass Post, PO Box 5076, Slough, SL1 0RX. Neither page mentions the other. A request made verbally is treated as a formal subject access request from the day it is made. One timing point worth knowing if you are mid-proceedings: the deadline is one calendar month, which is what Cafcass's subject access page and its own policy both say. The help text on its contact form says 30 calendar days instead. Either way it is slower than most hearing dates, so if you need something before a hearing, raise it with the court rather than waiting on a request. If the records you want are about somebody who has died, this is not a subject access request — data protection rights end at death.

Made under UK GDPR Article 15

Any organisation that decides how and why your personal data is used is a data controller, and must respond to a subject access request. That covers retailers, employers, membership bodies, landlords, charities, gyms and online services alike.

The organisation must confirm whether it is processing your data, provide a copy of it, and explain why it holds it, who it shares it with and how long it keeps it. There is normally no fee.

• All personal data held about you
• Correspondence and internal notes referring to you
• Account, order or membership history
• Call recordings and chat transcripts
• Marketing preferences and consent records

Deadline. An organisation must respond without undue delay and within one month. It may extend by up to two further months where the request is complex or you have made a number of requests, but it must tell you within the first month that it is doing so, and why.

Cost. There is normally no fee. A reasonable fee may only be charged where a request is manifestly unfounded or excessive, or where you ask for further copies.

Proving who you are. An organisation may ask you to verify your identity, but only where it has reasonable doubts about who you are, and it should ask for the minimum needed. Where it needs further information to deal with your request, the one-month clock pauses until you provide it.

How hard they have to look. An organisation has to carry out a reasonable and proportionate search — not an exhaustive one. What counts as reasonable depends on the volume of information, the difficulty of locating it, and the size and resources of the organisation. This is a common reason for a partial response, and it is worth being specific about what you want.

If they ignore you. Complain to the organisation first. Since 19 June 2026 every organisation has had a legal duty to give you a clear way to raise a data protection complaint, to acknowledge it within 30 days, to look into it properly and to tell you the outcome. If it does not, or the answer is incomplete, you can then complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.