Health and Home (Essex) Limited v Essex County Council & Ors

Claims based on fraud, conspiracy or misfeasance in public office must plead the primary facts said to constitute dishonesty. Assertions that reports were false, conduct was malicious, or defendants acted improperly are insufficient without particulars explaining what occurred, when, by whom and why it was dishonest or unlawful.

A claimant cannot defer essential particulars until disclosure. Contract claims must identify the relevant terms, payment obligations and alleged breaches. Summary judgment is appropriate where the claim has no realistic prospect of success, assessed without conducting a mini-trial. Strike out may follow where defects have persisted and there is no proper basis for believing amendment would succeed.

Health and Home, a care-home provider, brought claims against Essex County Council, Southend City Council, the Care Quality Commission and individuals. It alleged that safeguarding alerts, inspections, enforcement steps and decisions concerning residents formed part of conspiracies intended to damage its business. It also claimed unpaid care fees, breach of duty, misfeasance in public office and related torts.

Essex and Southend applied for strike out and, in Southend’s case, summary judgment. The court considered whether the pleaded claims disclosed reasonable causes of action, whether the contractual claims had a realistic prospect of success, and whether further amendments should be permitted.

1. Disposition. The claim was struck out as having no real prospect of success and as totally without merit. The claims of Mr Stavrinides and Decolace Properties Ltd had already fallen away because they had not served the claim form.
2. Strike out and summary judgment. On strike out, the court considered the pleaded facts at their highest, but had to decide whether they disclosed a reasonable cause of action. On summary judgment, applying Easy Air v Opal Telecom Ltd [2009] EWHC 339 (Ch), the question was whether the claim had a realistic rather than fanciful prospect of success. The court was not to conduct a mini-trial, but could analyse evidence and contemporaneous documents.
3. Conspiracy and misfeasance. The allegations depended on dishonesty. The claimant had pleaded conclusions, including that safeguarding reports were false, contracts were cancelled for an improper purpose, admissions were prevented and rumours were spread. It had not pleaded the underlying facts: which reports, when they were made, by whom, in what respect they were false, who knew that, or how the other alleged conduct occurred. The pleading therefore lacked a factual foundation from which dishonesty, agreement, unlawful means, predominant purpose, malice or bad faith could be inferred.
4. Particulars and disclosure. The principles in Sofer v Swiss Independent Trustees SA [2020] EWCA Civ 699, Three Rivers District Council v Governor and Company of the Bank of England (No.3) [2003] 2 AC 1, and the other authorities cited required primary facts to be pleaded. A Part 18 request or anticipated disclosure could not be used as a fishing exercise to discover those facts later.
5. Contract and tort claims. The contractual pleadings did not identify the complete contractual terms, when payment was due, the service users and periods concerned, or the contractual requirements for termination. The pleaded duty-of-care claim lacked a proper Caparo analysis. The CQC could not owe a private-law duty of care to compensate the regulated provider for pure economic loss caused in exercising statutory functions.
6. Amendment. Further amendment was refused. A substantially similar contractual claim had previously been struck out, the deficiencies had been identified for months, no amended pleading or supporting evidence had been produced, and there was no real prospect that the serious allegations could properly be pleaded.

• High Court (King’s Bench Division): the claim, transferred from the Commercial Court, was struck out on 22 May 2026.
• The judgment recorded that an earlier claim against Essex, claim no K00CM285, had been struck out on 13 December 2024. It also recorded that an appeal concerning CQC enforcement action had been withdrawn before hearing.