| NEGLIGENCE — Duty of care to whom? — Local authority — Vulnerable family housed in flat and provided with social services by local authority — Flat infiltrated by youths — Youths imprisoning family in flat and assaulting them — Whether local authority owing duty of care to parents of family — Whether breach of duty
X and another v Hounslow London Borough Council [2008] EWHC 1168 (QB); [2008] WLR (D) 180
QBD: Maddison J: 23 May 2008
A local authority could be held to be under a duty of care to protect vulnerable adults from abuse by third parties.
Maddison J so held when allowing a claim for damages brought by X and Y against Hounslow London Borough Council for negligence in failing to respond to a danger by rehousing them.
X and Y, together with A and B, Y’s two young children from her first marriage, occupied a flat provided by the defendant council. X, Y and A all had learning difficulties. The defendant’s Social Services Department recognised them as vulnerable and provided support. From 1996 onwards there were concerns about the suitability of the flat. In September 2000 local youths infiltrated the flat and later took it over. On a weekend in mid-November the youths effectively imprisoned the family in their home and subjected them to an ordeal of assault and abuse, for which some of the youths were later prosecuted and given custodial sentences. The family was then accommodated elsewhere.
MADDISON J said that the defendant was to be regarded as a single entity, rather than as a collection of distinct departments or sections, whose knowledge, acts and omissions were to be judged independently of those of the others. The test to be applied was the familiar tri-partite test which derived from Caparo Industries Ltd v Dickman [1990] 2 AC 605. First, on the facts it was reasonably foreseeable by 20 October, or, at the latest, 7 November, that the claimants were in danger of suffering a serious attack from the youths in their flat. Secondly, there was a relationship of sufficient proximity between the parties as the defendant was the claimants’ landlord and a provider of social services. Thirdly, it was just, fair and reasonable to impose a duty of care on the defendant in the form of a narrowly-defined duty to move the claimants out of the flat in response to the unusual but dangerous situation which had developed. Other features of the case did not displace that conclusion, and it was supported by case law since the advent of the Human Rights Act 1998, especially observations of the Court of Appeal in JD v East Berkshire NHS Trust [2004] QB 558 and Jain v Trent Strategic Health Authorty [2008] QB 246. The defendant had been in breach of its duty in failing to consider and to implement its emergency transfer procedure by which the claimants could have been moved, and that failure had been the cause of the loss. Whatever the statutory provisions were which governed that procedure, which was not clear, the reality was that the procedure had been available for use. In view of the decision on the claim based on the tort of negligence, it was unnecessary to consider a claim by reference to ss 6 and 7 of the Human Rights Act 1998. |
