Cruz v Lancashire Police & Anor

Strict liability under the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 arises only where the workplace presents a real or material and foreseeable risk of relevant injury to the workers concerned. A risk to detainees, or a risk arising merely from operational delay, does not establish a breach owed to custody officers unless it is connected with injury to those officers. Risk assessment must involve an element of realism and need not approach probability. Where an alleged transient obstruction does not make a traffic route unsuitable, the same circumstance cannot ordinarily render the workplace inefficiently maintained under regulation 5.

The claimant, a civilian detention officer employed by G4S, was injured while escorting a drunk and disorderly detainee into a cell at Burnley Police Station. The cell door had been left partially open. When a colleague opened it, the detainee suddenly fell, pulling the claimant to the floor and injuring her wrist.

The claimant sued the Chief Constable, who occupied and controlled the police station but was not her employer, alleging breach of regulations 5 and 17 of the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992. HHJ Butler, after a trial limited to liability and causation, found no breach of regulation 5 because the partially open door presented no foreseeable risk of injury. The claimant appealed, contending that the risk to officers escorting detainees was foreseeable.

1. Appeal dismissed. The claimant’s only possible route to success was breach of regulation 5, which imposed strict liability. The relevant workplace was the corridor, and the issue was whether the partially open cell door meant that it was not maintained in an efficient state.
2. Per Lord Justice Tomlinson, the relevant inquiry was whether the door presented a real or material, foreseeable risk of relevant injury to the custody officers whose workplace was under consideration. The Regulations protect workers in the relevant workplace. A foreseeable risk to a detainee resulting from delay in reaching a cell had little or no bearing on the risk to the officers.
3. The assessment had to contain an element of realism. The risk need not approach probability, but it had to be materially connected with the condition relied on. The evidence supported the conclusion that leaving doors fully open concerned operational efficiency and detainee safety, rather than identifying partially open doors as a source of injury to custody officers.
4. The finding that no real risk existed was within the range of reasonable decision-making and, in Tomlinson LJ’s view, obviously correct. The notion that an inadvertently partially open door in a complex containing many cells created a material risk of injury to staff lacked reality.
5. The alternative analysis under regulation 5 was unnecessary. The question was the door’s position, not whether it was faulty or in working order. The claimant accepted that the transient obstruction did not make the corridor unsuitable for users under regulation 17. That acceptance was fatal to the regulation 5 argument: the same condition could not make the corridor inefficiently maintained when it did not make the traffic route unsuitable.
6. Lord Justice Simon and Mr Justice Morgan agreed with the judgment. The appeal was dismissed.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): The appeal from the Preston County Court was dismissed. The court upheld HHJ Butler’s conclusion that the partially open cell door did not create a foreseeable real or material risk of relevant injury and therefore did not breach regulation 5 of the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992.