X v Hounslow London Borough Council
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | MR JUSTICE MADDISON,Mr Justice Maddison |
| Judgment Date | 23 May 2008 |
| Neutral Citation | [2008] EWHC 1168 (QB) |
| Docket Number | Case No: HQ03X03456 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Date | 23 May 2008 |
[2008] EWHC 1168 (QB)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Mr Justice Maddison
Case No: HQ03X03456
Elizabeth-Anne Gumbel QC and Henry Witcomb (instructed by Leigh Day & Co.) for the Claimant
Andrew Warnock (instructed by Barlow Lyde & Gilbert ) for the Defendant
Hearing dates: 4–8 & 12 February 2008
Approved Judgment
I direct that pursuant to CPR PD 39A para 6.1 no official shorthand note shall be taken of this Judgment and that copies of this version as handed down may be treated as authentic.
THE HONOURABLE MR JUSTICE MADDISON
INTRODUCTION
The Claimants, X andY, who are both protected parties proceeding by the Litigation Friend, the Official Solicitor, claim damages against the Defendant, the London Borough of Hounslow. The claim arises out of what on any view can probably be described as an ordeal which the Claimants suffered in their own home at the hands of local youths during the weekend of Friday 17 th to Sunday 19 th November 2000. For convenience, I will refer to this as “the relevant weekend”. Where it is necessary to refer to the Claimants separately, I will do so by using their first names.
The Claimants' home was 60 Frank Towell Court in Feltham, a two-bedroomed flat to which I will refer either as “No.60” or as “the flat”. The Defendant was the owner and landlord. No. 60 was on the 9 th (and top) floor of a block of flats. Y had lived there since 1993, when she signed a tenancy agreement and moved in with her daughters A and B, Y being no longer with the girls' father. In 1998, Y had met X at a party, and X had moved into No.60 in or about July of that year. On 23 rd January, 1999 X and Y were married. By the time of the relevant weekend, X, Y, A and B were 44, 38, 11 and 8 years of age respectively.
X, Y and A all had learning difficulties. Though the family was able to live as a unit in the community, it functioned at a low level in some respects, and was seen as vulnerable, as will appear in more detail later in this judgment. Two sections of the Defendant's Social Services Department had been engaged with the family prior to the relevant weekend. These were the Community Team for People with Learning Disabilities (“CTPLD”) and the Children and Families section (“C & F”) to both of which I will return in due course.
For a period of time prior to the relevant weekend the Claimants had been befriended and then taken advantage of by a number of youths. It is not known exactly when this began to happen, but the evidence suggests that it probably did so at or about the end of the summer of 2000. As time went by some of these youths would use the Claimants' flat as a place at which to live, take drugs, engage in sexual activity, leave stolen goods, and generally misbehave. X was assaulted quite seriously in a MacDonald's restaurant on 11th October 2000 by one of the youths, who believed that X had “grassed” on him in relation to some stolen goods found by the police at No.60 on the previous day.
During the relevant weekend the Claimants were effectively imprisoned in their own home, and repeatedly assaulted and abused, often in the presence of the two children. Both Claimants later made statements to the police, describing their ordeals. What follows is intended only as a brief summary. X said that at one stage the youths confined him and Y to their bedroom, and made them perform sexual acts. They threw many of'X's and Y's possessions over the balcony. They forced pepper and fluid into X's eyes. They locked him in the bathroom for a time, in the dark. They made him drink urine, eat dog biscuits, dog faeces and the faeces of one of the youths, threatening him that he would be stabbed if he did not. They made him put a vibrator up his bottom, and then lick it. They sprayed kitchen cleaner in his mouth, face and hair. They slashed him repeatedly all over his body with a knife or knives. X's statement was to similar effect, adding that she too was made to put the vibrator in her mouth. The children too were abused, assaulted and locked in their bedroom from time to time. Even the family dog was abused. It is unnecessary to go into further detail, or into the physical and psychological injuries suffered by the Claimants as a result. Damages have been agreed, subject to liability. Liability, however, is hotly in dispute. I will return to the arguments in much more detail later. For introductory purposes I will confine myself to saying that the Claimants submit, amongst other things, that the Defendant, through its Social Services and Housing Departments, should have foreseen that the Claimants were in imminent physical danger at No. 60, and should have arranged for them to be accommodated elsewhere. For this failure, it is said, the Defendant is liable in the tort of negligence, and under sections 6 & 7 of the Human Rights Act, 1998, having acted in a manner incompatible with the Claimants' rights under Articles 3 and 8 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. In paragraph 5.3 of the Particulars of Claim it is pleaded that the Defendant is also liable in the tort of nuisance, but that claim is no longer pursued. For its part, the Defendant denies that it owed the Claimants any duty of care. The Defendant points out that in no previous case (as Counsel for the Claimants acknowledged in argument) has a local authority been held to be under a duty of care to protect vulnerable adults from abuse by third parties. Any failings in this regard are justiciable if at all, only within the forum of public law, and not by way of actions for damages of the kind brought here. Still less, says the Defendant, did it breach any such duty of care. What happened during the relevant weekend was caused by third parties, and was not reasonably foreseeable.
THE DEFENDANT'S DEPARTMENTS AND STAFF.
Because they will be referred to frequently during this judgment, I propose to deal briefly at this stage with the Defendant's departments and the roles performed within them by some of the Defendant's staff, insofar as they are relevant to the case.
I begin with the Social Services Department, which had within it different sections dealing with adults and children. Sue Spurlock became the Assistant Director of Adult Social Services in April 2000. She is now the Acting Director. As will appear, she gave evidence on behalf of the Defendant. However, she had never been directly responsible for the Claimants' cases, and had never met X.
Within Adult Social Services was a team which dealt specifically with adults with learning disabilities. This was the CTPLD to which I have already referred. Sue Spurlock explained in evidence that this team provided supportive services to such adults, whilst trying to help them to live as independently as possible.
At different times, the CTPLD provided psychiatric nurses and social workers for Y, and a social worker for X. I deal first with Y. From 2 nd January 1995 to 18 th May 1998 Louise Ellis, a community psychiatric nurse, was appointed to work with Y. Then after a gap of some months, Joe Darrow was appointed in a similar capacity from 30 th November 1998 until 23 rd July 199Neither of these nurses gave evidence. Meanwhile, on 4 th February 1998 a student social worker, Terry Murphy, who similarly did not give evidence, was allocated to Y's case. He was replaced on 20 th August 1999 by Tajinder Hayre, a recently qualified social worker who was still allocated to Y's case at the time of the relevant weekend. Tajinder Hayre did give evidence.
Turning to X, no community psychiatric nurse was ever allocated to his case by the Defendant. Neither was a social worker allocated to him until 23 rd March, 2000, when, Tajinder Hayre became his social worker as well as Y's. It is right to observe that X was independently-minded, and resistant to what he saw as interference by the Social Services Department.
Before leaving the CTPLD for the moment, I add for the sake of completeness that Tajinder Hayre's immediate supervisor was Joanne Rawles. She was often referred to in the evidence, but did not herself give evidence.
Within the Social Services Department was also a separate Children and Families section (“C & F”). Sue Spurlock gave evidence that this section was responsible for the welfare of children and for assessing whether they were at risk and if so what steps should be taken to address such risk. Sometimes a social worker would be allocated to a particular child, in which case the social worker would visit the child on a weekly or fortnightly basis. Otherwise, the case of a child who was a “client” would be considered by the duty or “backup” team, consisting of social workers working on a rota basis. A social worker would always be available to respond to particular calls in such a case, but there was no continuity of social worker.
From 2 nd February 2000 until mid-April 2000 C & F allocated a social worker, Heidi Vogel, to A's case. Otherwise, neither of the children ever had an allocated social worker, and their cases were dealt with by duty social workers. One such, Karen Wan, took an interest in A's case in particular from April 1999 when, as will appear, a variety of different concerns were expressed about A. Neither Heidi Vogel nor Karen Wan gave evidence.
I deal finally with the Defendant's Housing Department, sometimes referred to in the evidence as “Hounslow Homes”. This Department carried out different statutory functions, to some of which I will return in due course. Broadly, the Department was responsible for the provision and allocation of...
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