Mark Hedley was born in 1946 in London and was educated at Framlingham College and Liverpool University before being called to the Bar in 1969. After Voluntary Service Overseas in the Northern Sudan, he practised at the Bar in Liverpool on the Northern Circuit and gradually developed a specialism in the Law relating to children. Mark became Head of Chambers in 1983 and a Recorder in 1988, thereafter, he became a Circuit Judge assigned to Liverpool in 1992 and was national Course Director in Family Law at the Judicial College from 1997 – 2002.
In 2002 he became a High Court Judge assigned to the Family Division (and in accordance with tradition was knighted) and subsequently became additionally a Judge of the Court of Protection. He was successively the Family Division Liaison Judge for Wales and for Greater London. He retired in 2013 but still sits as requested as a Deputy Judge.
Mark has been a Reader in the Church of England since 1975 and was Chancellor of the Diocese of Liverpool from 2002 to 2018. He is now currently Vice President of Clergy Disciplinary Tribunals for the Church of England. In 2002 he was awarded an Honorary LLD from Liverpool University and, in 2005 was awarded an Honorary Fellowship from Liverpool John Moores University. He is currently a Visiting Professor in Law at Liverpool Hope University.
He retains a particular interest in the ethics and practice of the work of the Judiciary in Family and Personal Law and has both written, spoken and broadcast on this subject. That is part of a wider interest in the increasingly paradoxical exercise of living Christianly in a secular culture.
Mark is married to Erica; they have four children and three grandchildren. They have lived in central Liverpool since 1974 and have been, and continue to be, involved in many third sector organisations both locally and nationally.
Mark was commissioned as a Deputy Lieutenant of Merseyside in 2014.
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