Cafcass has reappointed Catharine Seddon and Peter Fish CB to its board for four years, from 19 April 2026 to 18 April 2030, giving one administrative folder the kind of job security usually reserved for people who have found the correct form and remembered where they put it.
The reappointments were approved by the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. Cafcass, the statutory body that safeguards and promotes children’s welfare in Family Court proceedings, will continue with two board members whose terms have been renewed through the public appointments process.
This is a serious announcement. The joke begins when four years is shown to a filing system. Four years is an extraordinary promise to make to a piece of paper. Most documents are renamed three times before lunch, moved into a folder called “final”, then discovered inside another folder called “final final” by someone who has already sent an email asking where they went.
The official notice records Seddon’s experience across public boards, justice, health and other institutions. It records Fish’s career as a solicitor and senior government lawyer. It also records that neither declared political activity. The folder has declared an interest in orderly chronology, although it remains under investigation for the unexplained disappearance of a paper clip.
Appointments to the Cafcass Board are made by the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. They are regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments, and the recruitment process must comply with the Governance Code on Public Appointments. This means the people appointed to oversee a system must first pass through a system with enough stages to appoint a chair, a secretary and probably a smaller system to monitor the stages.
A fictional governance clerk has now placed the reappointments in the diary, underlined the end date and added a reminder for 18 April 2030. The reminder is marked urgent, because nothing says confidence in public administration like warning a calendar about an event four years away.
By then, the folder expects to have learned to open attachments, recognise an urgent request and stop sending important papers to the printer that ran out of toner in 2024. It has also scheduled a meeting to review whether the review meeting is necessary. The meeting will report back after a further meeting has confirmed that reporting back remains the preferred route.
Four years is a long time in government. It is even longer in a folder. By 2030, this one will have achieved the rarest administrative distinction of all: becoming permanent enough to lose.
Source: GOV.UK.
