A GRANDMOTHER has won her Appeal Court fight to keep her grandson's jailbird father - who comes from Huddersfield - out of his life.

The boy - who cannot be named for legal reasons - has lived with his grandmother in the Oxford area since the late 1990s, after his mother was given a long jail term for smuggling drugs.

His father has also spent time in jail for dishonesty.

A court order was made in May, 1997, saying the maternal grandmother should take over the boy's care.

A number of legal wrangles followed over the boy's future and contact with his father.

The father eventually had an order put on him preventing him from making any more applications to the courts about his son without a judge's permission.

Such permission was granted at Oxford County Court last August.

This opened the way for the father to apply to have a say in the secondary schooling of his son.

But Lord Justice May, sitting with Lord Justice Scott Baker at the Appeal Court, allowed the grandmother's appeal against the county court's decision to allow the father back into the boy's life.

The judge said that, although the grandmother had been aware of the county court hearing, she had been told there was no need for her or her solicitors to go.

The county court judge had originally intended to refuse the father's application, but had changed his mind after hearing oral submissions.

The grandmother did not have a chance to put her case, said the Appeal Court judges, so the process was unfair.

Lord Justice May ordered a fresh county court hearing of the father's application, at which the grandmother will be able to argue he should have no role in deciding his son's educational future.