A recent Court of Appeal decision considered whether a local authority had a duty of care towards its social housing tenants.

The case was brought by a married couple placed in social housing because of their minor learning difficulties. Two sections of the council’s social services department had been engaged with the family for some considerable time and they had been assigned a social worker to advise them and to assist with their needs.

The social worker discovered that a group of youths had physically and sexually assaulted the couple and they had been assaulted in front of their two children. The youths had befriended the couple in order to use their premises for illegal activities prior to the attacks.

Although the police were contacted, no action could be taken unless the couple made a complaint themselves. The social worker arranged meetings with child protection, harassment and re-housing officers and wrote letters to the council’s housing department asking for urgent consideration of the couple’s long-standing re-housing application.

The court had to decide whether or not the council owed the couple a duty of care and, if so, whether it was in breach of its duty for having failed to provide the family with temporary housing in emergency accommodation in circumstances where the attacks were made by third parties and were not reasonably foreseeable. The court ruled against the council and the council appealed.

The Court of Appeal found that the council did not assume a responsibility for the couple. It did not owe them a duty of care at common law and was not in breach of any legal duty to them.

Duncan Lewis solicitors can advise on cases similar to this and has a large team of community care and housing solicitors with broad legal experience in these kinds of situations. Duncan Lewis is the UK’s largest

legal aid law firm in the UK and is able to take on clients who are eligible for legal aid as well as private clients for housing law and community care law.