X & Anor v London Borough of Hounslow

A local authority may owe vulnerable adult tenants a narrowly defined duty of care where it provides social services, knows of an escalating and specific danger from third parties, and has an emergency procedure capable of removing them from the danger. The Caparo requirements of reasonable foreseeability, proximity, and fairness, justice and reasonableness must be considered together. General vulnerability or unsuitable accommodation alone is insufficient. Once serious violence and harassment at the home became clearly foreseeable, the authority’s departments had to communicate and act collectively. Failure to use an available emergency transfer procedure may constitute breach, and removal may be causative of the subsequent assault. Such a claim is distinguishable from a claim merely enforcing a statutory housing allocation scheme by judicial review.

X and Y, vulnerable adult tenants of the defendant local authority, claimed damages after local youths subjected them and their children to sustained intimidation, exploitation and serious violence in their home. They alleged that the authority’s Social Services and Housing Departments should have recognised the escalating danger and moved them to temporary accommodation before the relevant weekend. The authority denied any duty of care, relying on third-party causation and the public-law nature of housing decisions. The claim also relied on the Human Rights Act 1998, sections 6 and 7, and Articles 3 and 8 of the Convention. The central issues were whether a duty of care existed, whether it was breached, whether the breach caused the loss, and whether the claim was barred as a housing-law claim.

1. Duty of care. The appropriate test was the familiar tripartite test in [1990] 2 A.C. 605: reasonable foreseeability, sufficient proximity, and whether it was just, fair and reasonable to impose a duty.
2. The defendant was to be treated as a single legal entity. Its Housing and Social Services Departments, including the relevant adult and children’s sections, were required to communicate information suggesting that the claimants or their family might be in danger. The departments’ knowledge, acts and omissions were therefore considered collectively.
3. Foreseeability and proximity. Earlier evidence of general vulnerability was insufficient by itself. By October and, at the latest, November 2000, the combination of infiltration of the flat by youths, stolen goods, threats, an assault, possession of keys by outsiders, fear of reporting matters and mounting disorder made a serious physical attack of the kind suffered reasonably foreseeable. Third-party conduct did not prevent foreseeability, although a high degree of foresight was required. The relationship was sufficiently proximate because the defendant was the claimants’ landlord and provided continuing social services to them and their children.
4. Scope of the duty. The defendant did not owe a general duty to protect vulnerable adults from all harm. A narrow duty arose to move the claimants from the flat in response to the developing emergency. The duty represented an incremental extension of established negligence principles and was not inconsistent with the absence of an earlier case imposing liability in materially similar circumstances.
5. Breach and causation. The defendant had an emergency transfer procedure for extreme cases involving severe violence or harassment. It should have invoked that procedure on or shortly after 20 October 2000, or at the latest shortly after 7 November. The points system and ordinary management-transfer procedure were too slow. The failure reflected inadequate inter-departmental communication, insufficient appreciation of urgency and failure to give the case proper priority. Had the claimants been offered temporary accommodation, they would probably have accepted it, and the assault would not have occurred.
6. The negligence claim was not merely an attempt to enforce a statutory housing allocation scheme. O’Rourke v Camden London Borough Council was distinguishable because the claimants were established tenants seeking removal from dangerous accommodation, and their claim concerned the combined response of Housing and Social Services.
7. The claim under the Human Rights Act 1998 was out of time, but an extension would have been granted. It was unnecessary to determine that claim after liability in negligence had been established.
8. Judgment was entered for the claimants on liability. Damages were substantially agreed, with remaining issues to be resolved at hand-down.