Council ordered to pay damages to parents in s. 47 enquiry dispute

A London borough has been ordered to pay damages to the parents of a six-year-old girl after it unlawfully decided to investigate whether she was suffering or was likely to suffer significant harm.

The case of AB & Anor, R (on the application of) v The London Borough of Haringey [2013] EWHC 416 involved an unsigned letter from a member of the public about the child, whose parents were both experienced, qualified social workers.

The parents sought a judicial review of a decision by Haringey’s Head of Service for First Response (SFR) to abandon the initial assessment process and immediately escalate the service’s response to the referral into a section 47 Children Act 1989 enquiry.

Counsel for the parents argued that the decision was not, either in substance or form, one that amounted to a decision to establish a section 47 enquiry at all so that, in truth, no section 47 decision was taken and no section 47 enquiry ever started.

The parents’ barrister, Eleanor Grey QC,  added that if such a decision had in fact been taken, it was taken without there being any proper grounds to support it.

She argued that the decision was so flawed procedurally and so fundamentally lacking in the essential minimum requirements of a guidance-compliant decision-making process that it was unlawful.

The claimants dropped a separate challenge that the decision to initiate an initial assessment was unlawful. However, they did seek a declaration that the SFR acted unlawfully in seeking information about the girl from her GP and school without obtaining parental consent first and by providing inaccurate information for the purpose of obtaining such information.

Haringey’s case, amongst other things, was that the head of the SFR had decided at a meeting on 4 May 2011 that the initial assessment should be aborted and turned immediately into a section 47 enquiry.

HH Judge Anthony Thornton described this as a “remarkable claim” since the Head of the SFR had only recorded this decision in her letter to the parents on 5 May and neither logged the decision in the case notes nor recorded it in any other way “and took the took the decision without the involvement of [the allocated team manager] and whilst also making a reference to the LADO [local authority designated officer] for a strategy meeting to be held after the decision was said to have been taken”.

The only record was a “throw-away” statement made by the team manager in the core assessment document entered on 26 June 2011.

The High Court judge said: “It is inconceivable that a formal section 47 enquiry decision would be taken in such a casual manner and without being recorded contemporaneously in any document save in a letter to the parent of the child who had been referred and that that decision was not reported to the LADO or the DI liaison police officer or logged or noted on the core assessment document or dealt with in the evidence of [the team manager].

Judge Thornton said there were a significant number of reasons pointing to there never having been a section 47 decision.

These included the fact that the family were visited and the parents were interviewed separately from the girl. “These interviews were not in structure or content part of a core assessment but were part of, indeed the principal component part of, an initial assessment.”

The judge ruled that there never had been a section 47 Children Act 1989 enquiry decision and the council’s insistence that one was taken was “both erroneous and unlawful”.

Judge Thornton also said that the claimants were entitled to a decision from the court as to what the position would have been had the Head of SFR succeeded in making a s. 47 decision.

He said: “The answer is a clear and unequivocal one: that decision would be unlawful and should be set aside…..It follows that the decision, had it been taken, would have been wholly unreasonable and unsustainable since it would have failed to take account most of the crucial matters required of a section 47 decision and there was no reason for taking the decision in the way it is now suggested it was taken.”

Judge Thornton added that the council’s initial data-gathering had been unlawful, and that there had been serious departures from permissible practice.

In terms of remedies, the judge said the claimants were entitled to a quashing order “quashing the purported section 47 enquiry decision and to declarations that there never was a section 47 enquiry decision, that the initial assessment was terminated because EF was not at risk of significant harm and because it was highly likely that the anonymous referral was malicious”.

He added that the parents were also entitled to declarations that Haringey had acted unlawfully in not seeking the parents’ consent before approaching the girl’s GP and school and seeking information from them.

The judge also ordered that the council to pay £2,000 in damages to the claimants, according to the BBC.

A Haringey Council spokeswoman said: “Our handling of this case fell below the standards that we would expect, and we apologise to the family concerned. We are committed to learning from the findings of the court as we continue to make improvements to our child protection and safeguarding systems.”