A year leading the way: Our 2025 in review

As the days get shorter and 2025 draws to an end, FTS is reflecting on another incredible year. This has been an extra special 12 months, with major wins in pushing for change in the drug and alcohol testing sector.

FTS was set up to provide the most accurate, nuanced, and legally defensible drug, alcohol and DNA testing services for family law and care proceedings. We have long been pushing our industry to improve how it analyses and reports results, and to comply with the legal requirements governing this. Some of FTS’ accomplishments in 2025 include:

Impressive Events and Webinar Calendar

• Our experts have spoken at 78 events and webinars to audiences across the UK and Jersey, actively empowering social workers, local family justice boards and legal professionals to challenge inadequate reports and treat hair strand testing as the expert opinion evidence it is.

Mainstream media coverage, focused on reform

• We have taken awareness of hair strand testing mainstream, with media coverage in The Observer, Professional Social Work Magazine and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. These interviews resulted from two articles (1 and 2) FTS co-published in Family Law Journal with a leading barrister who shares FTS’ concerns about how hair strand testing is interpreted and reported.

Advocacy Campaign

• Off the back of this work, an open letter and advocacy campaign was launched which successfully pushed the Ministry of Justice’s Family Division to set up a working group on hair strand testing. Our work has also been recognised by other solicitors and barristers in articles and conference talks.

Clear message on legal obligations

• We have made it very clear what the legal obligations around hair strand testing are. Despite clear legal requirements on how to report results, FTS is still the only company in the sector fully adhering to these requirements – publishing all findings and explaining their significance, instead of adopting Society of Hair Testing cut-off levels to filter out and report results. These thresholds, which are over 30 years old now, were only ever intended as guidance, not the requirements many treat them as.

Leading the industry towards reform

• Other testing companies are now citing the same research, publications and legal cases we’ve been highlighting for years. Understanding of safeguarding, racial bias and cut-off levels within drug and alcohol testing this year became mainstream, taking FTS’ core messages to more people than ever.

These accomplishments reflect the mission of FTS to support the right outcomes for vulnerable children and families with reliable, court-compliant and in-depth analysis.

We have never just processed and analysed samples. We have demanded more transparency and accountability from a sector that has been complacent for too long. We have pioneered change as one of the most trusted drug, DNA and alcohol analysis companies in the UK. We have changed the entire conversation around drug and alcohol testing in family law.

FTS looks forward to an even more impactful 2026. We remain committed to supporting the legal sector with reliable evidence and to advocating for improvements in the way drugs and alcohol testing is instructed and interpreted.

We will continue to push the sector to ensure that science is conducted with the forensic expertise and ethical consideration that families deserve. When it comes to matters as important as care proceedings, we don’t believe in taking shortcuts.

Instruct Us

By instructing FTS expert services, you get the full context of the case every time, in a way that respects and upholds the rigour required by law. To benefit from FTS’ services, contact us on 01924 480 272 or email expert@forensic-testing.co.uk