Just off the A48 in east Cardiff sits a drab corrugated steel building in a nondescript business park. It does not look like a place of great consequence. But each day the work that takes place inside has potentially life-changing implications for hundreds of people.
Cansford's work is testing hair and nails for drugs and alcohol. The lab carries out tests for workplaces as well as for sporting bodies investigating performance-enhancing drug use. The bulk of its clients, though, are family lawyers and social services.
The family courts are a rarely-reported corner of the justice system but in the last couple of years that has started to change due to a transparency pilot that has seen WalesOnline report on a range of cases . Family courts make high-stakes decisions such as whether a baby is to be removed from their biological parents. Test results can play an important role in those decisions.
Cansford invited us on a tour of its lab as part of the transparency scheme to shed more light on family courts. It comes as the testing industry is facing some unsettling questions. Still looming large is the Randox scandal of 2017 – when alleged tampering threw thousands of results into doubt – and only weeks ago there were new shockwaves as lawyers and campaigners called for an urgent review of hair strand drug-testing in the family courts.
Their letter claimed the processes used to interpret results are "vastly oversimplified and misleading" and pose a "significant risk of syste.
