Broadway Care Centre Ltd, R (on the application of) v Caerphilly County Borough Council

A local authority’s decision to terminate a care-home contract is ordinarily a matter of private law where the claim is fundamentally contractual. The contractual context, the authority’s statutory social-services duties, and the public nature of care provision do not by themselves create a public-law claim for the provider.

A care home may exceptionally seek interim public-law relief to preserve the position of vulnerable residents where there are very unusual circumstances and no practical alternative claimant. It cannot, however, rely on residents’ Convention rights as their “victim” unless it is itself directly affected. The authority must assess residents’ welfare and comparative risks, and take relevant statutory guidance into account, but the court will not re-evaluate the merits or evidence absent a public-law error.

Broadway Care Centre Ltd operated Hillside Care Centre under a framework contract with Caerphilly County Borough Council. The Council terminated the contract immediately for alleged serious, and minor and persistent, breaches concerning the care and management of residents. It proposed a planned transition for the residents.

The claimant sought permission and substantive judicial review, arguing that termination was amenable to judicial review, that it had standing to protect residents’ Article 8 rights, that the Council had failed to assess the risks of removal, consult, follow statutory guidance concerning care-home closure, and act proportionately, and that termination interfered with its own Article 1 property rights.

1. Public-law amenability. The claim was fundamentally contractual. Neither Health and Social Care Act 2008, section 145, nor the contractual context transformed the Council’s contractual termination power into a public-law function. Section 145 concerned the care provider’s Convention-law accountability to residents and did not make the contractual relationship with the Council public in character. The claimant’s remedies for wrongful termination lay in private law.
2. Standing and Article 8. The claimant was not itself a victim of any interference with residents’ Article 8 rights. The residents were the persons directly affected, and the statutory scheme contemplated representation through residents, relatives or independent advocates. In very unusual circumstances, a care home might obtain short-term interim relief to preserve the status quo until residents or their representatives could act, but that exceptional possibility did not establish standing for the present substantive claim.
3. Merits. The Council had considered the risks of residents remaining at Hillside against the risks and disruption of moving them. It was entitled to treat failures of documentation and systems as serious indicators of risk. The court’s supervisory jurisdiction did not permit a minute re-evaluation of the evidence, and the decision was not shown to be Wednesbury unreasonable or disproportionate.
4. Guidance and consultation. The Council accepted that it had to act in substantial compliance with the Escalating Concerns Guidance, subject to good reason for departure. The Guidance primarily protected residents, did not require the Council to use the regulator’s precise structures, and did not impose a public-law duty to protect the provider’s commercial interests or to consult relatives before terminating the contract. The evidence showed that the Council had taken the Guidance into account.
5. Article 1. Termination did not deprive the claimant of ownership or possession of the care home, prevent it from operating the premises, or amount to regulatory cancellation. The claimant therefore had no arguable Article 1 claim. The challenge failed.

First-instance judicial review decision. No appellate history was stated in the judgment.