“On the balance of probabilities competent investigation at any stage would have led to the removal of the claimants from home. A child in need assessment should with competent care have been carried out in respect of each claimant by September 2006 at the latest. By September 2006 no competent local authority would have failed to carry out a detailed assessment and on the balance of probabilities such detailed assessment if carried out competently would and should have led to the conclusion that each of the claimants required removal from home if the family as a whole could not be moved. With the information obtained by competent assessment in September 2006 on application to the court the defendant would have obtained at least respite care and if necessary by (sic) interim care orders in respect of each claimant. Any competent local authority should and would have arranged for their removal from home into at least temporary care.”
“It was never said that the mother was an unfit mother. She loved and cared for her (vulnerable) children. They loved and needed her. Nothing she did or did not do caused them any harm: it was the harassment of the neighbours which did. … In the circumstances of this case, there was no justification for potentially separating, without the mother’s consent, mother from children, children from mother by use of care proceedings. To countenance care proceedings in the Family Court in order to overcome (or provide a subsequent remedy for) the problems caused by the neighbours on the estate would be, I would have thought, tantamount to an abuse of the process of that court.”
“a child shall be taken to be in need if - (a) he is unlikely to achieve or maintain, or to have the opportunity of achieving or maintaining, a reasonable standard of health or development without the provision for him of services by a local authority under this Part; (b) his health or development is likely to be significantly impaired, or further impaired, without the provision for him of such services; or (c) he is disabled …”
“92. … Although the services which the authority provides may ‘include’ the provision of accommodation (see section 17(6)), the provision of residential accommodation to rehouse a child in need so that he can live with his family is not the principal or primary purpose of this legislation. Housing is the function of the local housing authority, for the acquisition and management of whose housing stock detailed provisions are contained in the Housing Acts. Provisions of that kind are entirely absent from this legislation. 93. … A reading of that subsection [section 17(1)] as imposing a specific duty on the local social services authority to provide residential accommodation to individual children in need who have been assessed to be in need of such accommodation would sit uneasily with the legislation in the Housing Acts. As Mr Goudie pointed out, it could have the effect of turning the social services department of the local authority into another kind of housing department, with a different set of priorities for the provision of housing …”
“(a) that the child concerned is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm; and (b) that the harm, or likelihood of harm, is attributable to - (i) the care given to the child, or likely to be given to him if the order were not made, not being what it would be reasonable to expect a parent to give to him …”
“Parliament deems it to be in the public interest that things otherwise unjustifiable should be done, and that those who do such things with due care should be immune from liability to persons who may suffer thereby. But Parliament cannot reasonably be supposed to have licensed those who do such things to act negligently in disregard of the interests of others so as to cause them needless damage.”
“But there must come a stage when the discretion is exercised so carelessly or unreasonably that there has been no real exercise of the discretion which Parliament has conferred. The person purporting to exercise his discretion has acted in abuse or excess of his power. Parliament cannot be supposed to have granted immunity to persons who do that.”
“It is not sufficient that it might reasonably have foreseen that in the absence of such warnings, some road users might injure themselves or others. Reasonable foreseeability of physical injury is the standard criterion for determining the duty of care owed by people who undertake an activity which carries a risk of injury to others. But it is insufficient to justify the imposition of liability upon someone who simply does nothing: who neither creates the risk nor undertakes to do anything to avert it.”
“It is clear both in principle and from the decided cases that the local authority cannot be liable in damages for doing that which Parliament has authorised. Therefore if the decisions complained of fall within the ambit of such statutory discretion they cannot be actionable in common law. However if the decision complained of is so unreasonable that it falls outside the ambit of the discretion conferred upon the local authority, there is no a priori reason for excluding all common law liability.”
“In my judgment in the present cases, the social workers and the psychiatrist did not, by accepting the instructions of the local authority, assume any general professional duty of care to the plaintiff children. The professionals were employed or retained to advise the local authority in relation to the wellbeing of the plaintiffs but not to advise or treat the plaintiffs.”
“It follows that it will no longer be legitimate to rule that, as a matter of law, no common law duty of care is owed to a child in relation to the investigation of suspected child abuse and the initiation and pursuit of care proceedings. It is possible that there will be factual situations where it is not fair, just or reasonable to impose a duty of care, but each case will fall to be determined on its individual facts.”
“My Lords, I consider that it follows and that it should now be regarded as settled that if someone possessed of a special skill undertakes, quite irrespective of contract, to apply that skill for the assistance of another person who relies upon such skill, a duty of care will arise. The fact that the service is to be given by means of or by the instrumentality of words can make no difference. Furthermore, if in a sphere in which a person is so placed that others could reasonably rely upon his judgment or his skill or upon his ability to make careful inquiry, a person takes it upon himself to give information or advice to, or allows his information or advice to be passed on to, another person who, as he knows or should know, will place reliance upon it, then a duty of care will arise.”
“I think, therefore, that there is ample authority to justify your Lordships in saying now that the categories of special relationships which may give rise to a duty to take care in word as well as in deed are not limited to contractual relationships or to relationships of fiduciary duty, but include also relationships which in the words of Lord Shaw in Norton v Lord Ashburton[1914] AC 932 , 972 are ‘equivalent to contract,’ that is, where there is an assumption of responsibility in circumstances in which, but for the absence of consideration, there would be a contract. ... I shall therefore content myself with the proposition that wherever there is a relationship equivalent to contract, there is a duty of care. … Where, as in the present case, what is relied on is a particular relationship created ad hoc, it will be necessary to examine the particular facts to see whether there is an express or implied undertaking of responsibility.”
“All the members of the Appellate Committee in [Hedley Byrne] spoke in terms of the principle resting upon an assumption or undertaking of responsibility by the defendant towards the plaintiff, coupled with reliance by the plaintiff on the exercise by the defendant of due care and skill. Lord Devlin, in particular, stressed that the principle rested upon an assumption of responsibility when he said, at p 531, that ‘the essence of the matter in the present case and in others of the same type is the acceptance of responsibility’. … Furthermore, although Hedley Byrne itself was concerned with the provision of information and advice, it is clear that the principle in the case is not so limited and extends to include the performance of other services, as for example the professional services rendered by a solicitor to his client: see, in particular, Lord Devlin, at pp 529-530. Accordingly where the plaintiff entrusts the defendant with the conduct of his affairs, in general or in particular, the defendant may be held to have assumed responsibility to the plaintiff, and the plaintiff to have relied on the defendant to exercise due skill and care, in respect of such conduct.”
“It does not much matter why he decided to do it; it may be that he thought it would be profitable or it may be that he was providing a service pursuant to some statutory duty, as in Phelps v Hillingdon London Borough Council[2001] 2 AC 619 and Ministry of Housing and Local Government v Sharp[1970] 2 QB 223 .”
“The question of whether the order can have generated a duty of care is comparable with the question of whether a statutory duty can generate a common law duty of care. The answer is that it cannot: see Gorringe v Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council[2004] 1 WLR 1057 . The statute either creates a statutory duty or it does not. (That is not to say, as I have already mentioned, that conduct undertaken pursuant to a statutory duty cannot generate a duty of care in the same way as the same conduct undertaken voluntarily.) But you cannot derive a common law duty of care directly from a statutory duty. Likewise, as it seems to me, you cannot derive one from an order of court.”
“In the tort of negligence, a person A is not under a duty to take care to prevent harm occurring to person B through a source of danger not created by A unless (i) A has assumed a responsibility to protect B from that danger, (ii) A has done something which prevents another from protecting B from that danger, (iii) A has a special level of control over that source of danger, or (iv) A’s status creates an obligation to protect B from that danger.”
“In purporting to investigate the risk that the claimants’ neighbours posed to the claimants and subsequently in attempting to monitor the claimants’ plight as set out in the sequence of events above, the defendant had accepted a responsibility for the claimants’ particular difficulties and/or there was a special nexus or special relationship between the claimants and the defendant. The defendant purported to protect the claimants by such investigation and in as far as such investigation is shown to have been carried out negligently and/or negligently acted on the defendant is liable for breach of duty.”
“Each of the social workers and/or social work managers and other staff employed by the defendant who was allocated as the social worker or manager for the claimants or tasked with investigating the plight of the claimants owed to the claimants a duty of care.”