Kate Akerman

Year of Call: 1994, Middle Temple

Kate akerman
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Kate specialises in all aspects of the law relating to children, and their safety and welfare, and has done so for much of her 30 plus years at the Bar – including public law, adoption, adoption breakdown, deprivation of liberty, forced marriage, private law, cases with an international element, surrogacy, 

Kate has built up a significant bank of experience and expertise. She takes a realistic and issues-focused approach to advice, representation and written and oral advocacy. She gives straightforward, no-nonsense advice, whomever she represents, be it a professional, lay, or vulnerable client.

She frequently conducts cases against leading counsel as an unled junior, or leading junior, including matters in the High Court.

Kate is an approachable practitioner, a pupil supervisor, and regularly offers training to colleagues, solicitors and other professionals.

Public children law

Kate has extensive and long experience of representing local authorities, parents, family members and children. 

She is often instructed by local authorities either pre-issue for advice in more complex cases, and/or in cases which involve consideration of a local authority’s powers, duties and responsibilities, and in respect of HRA claims.

Kate has a particular interest and expertise in cases with a significant forensic dimension – serious and complex injuries to children and/or the death of a child, FII, complex medical evidence, sexual abuse, child complainants, domestic, honour-based and other forms of violence, and parental alienation.

Private children law

Kate represents parents, other family members, and children pursuant to r16.4, and in cases with a more complex aspect to them – high conflict, relocation within/outside of the jurisdiction, allegations of domestic abuse, parental alienation, physical/emotional/sexual abuse of a child.

Kate’s extensive experience of conducting finding of fact hearings in public law cases brings an ability to master the marshalling of evidence, drafting pleadings and conduct cross-examination in complex private law cases involving allegations of abuse.

Notable Cases

  • A Local Authority v B [2025]

    Family

    Public law proceedings – Represented a parent in a case involving allegations of intrafamilial sexual abuse spanning a 20-year period.

  • A Local Authority v F and others [2024]

    Family

    Public law proceedings before a High Court Judge – Lengthy finding of fact hearing to determine allegations of trafficking of several children, immigration fraud, sham marriage, children forcibly removed by wider family from birth mother, forced marriage.

  • A Local Authority v B [2024]

    Family

    Public law proceedings - Represented a local authority in a case involving an allegation that a parent with complex needs deliberately suffocated a baby.

  • A Local Authority v A [2024]

    Family

    Public law proceedings - Represented a local authority in a case involving allegations that the mother had trafficked a child to this country from Nigeria and was engaged in organised crime. Issues of disclosure from the Home Office and the on-going criminal investigation fed into complexity.

  • A Local Authority v O [2024]

    Family

    Public law proceedings – Represented a local authority in a case involving a deep tissue laceration to a young boy; permission to withdraw proceedings where medical evidence was consistent with boy’s account that the injury was self-inflicted.

  • P [2023]

    Family

    Private law proceedings – Represented a child/Guardian in a case involving allegations that father sexually abused child, contested expert medical evidence as to transmission of Gonorrhoea.

  • A Local Authority v C [2022]

    Family

    Public law proceedings – Represented an intervenor (with a leader) facing allegations of intrafamilial child sexual abuse.

  • A, B and C (Children) [2019] EWFC

    Family

    Public law proceedings – Represented a local authority in a case involving allegations that parents inflicted multiple fractures to a newborn baby.

  • E, F and G (Children: Care Proceedings) [2019] EWFC B73

    Family

    Public law proceedings – Represented a local authority in a case involving an application by another Member State for the transfer of the proceedings under Article 15 Brussels IIA to that country.

  • Staffordshire County Council v B & anor [2016] EWHC 3183 (Fam)

    Family

    Public law proceedings before Keehan J – Represented a child/Guardian; father alleged to have inflicted differently-dated fractures and a head injury upon the subject baby whilst placed together in a residential unit under an interim care order.

  • Lancashire County Council v B [2014] EWFC 19

    Family

    Public law proceedings before Jackson J (as he then was) – Represented a parent, allegation of physical abuse of a baby.

  • Re W (A Child) [2013] EWHC 653

    Family

    Public law proceedings before Jackson J (as he then was) - Allegations of child sexual abuse, alleged perpetrator himself a child.

Professional Associations

  • Family Law Bar Association
  • Child Concern
  • Northern Circuit

Education

  • LLB (2:1) King’s College London, 1992.
  • Inns of Court School of Law 1994

Articles by Kate