Duties in loco parentis

The High Court was asked to consider whether a county council owed a non-delegable duty of care to a claimant injured during a school swimming lesson. Rebecca Wilson analyses the ruling.

In the case of Annie Woodland (by her litigation friend Mark Woodland) v Swimming Teachers Association & Ors [2011] EWHC 2631 Essex County Council successfully applied to strike out an allegation that it owed a non-delegable duty of care to a claimant injured during a school swimming lesson.

The facts

The claimant was a 10-year-old school pupil at a school in Essex, for which Essex County Council were the Local Education Authority. She attended a school swimming lesson in the summer of 2000 at the Gloucester Park Swimming Pool in Basildon with the rest of her class. The pool was run by Basildon County Council.

The swimming lesson was supervised by a swimming teacher in the pool and a lifeguard at the side of the pool. Neither the teacher nor the lifeguard were employed by the claimant’s school but by a third party, Beryl Stotford, T/A Direct Swimming Services, with whom the school had contracted.

The claimant was in a group of better swimmers, who were taking part in an exercise where they were diving into the pool at the deep end, swimming to the shallow end and then repeating the exercise.

At some point during the lesson, the claimant was noted not to be swimming anymore but to be hanging vertically in the pool. Unfortunately, she suffered a serious brain injury through near drowning.

The claim

Proceedings were brought on behalf of the claimant by her father in negligence against Ms Stotford, the lifeguard, the Swimming Teachers’ Association, Basildon Council, who ran the pool and also Essex County Council as the Local Education Authority responsible for the school.

It was alleged against Essex that it owed a non-delegable duty of care to the claimant in the capacity of being in loco parentis, which if accepted would mean that Essex was potentially liable even though the accident had occurred outside of school in circumstances where the school was not supervising.

Essex accepted that it owed a duty to take such care as would be taken by a reasonably competent parent and to take reasonable steps to ensure that independent contractors it engaged were reasonably competent. However, it denied that it owed a non-delegable duty of care and applied to strike out that element of the claim.

The decision

HHJ Langstaff sitting in the Queens Bench Division of the High Court agreed with Essex. He noted that no known legal authority had gone so far as to hold that a school owes a duty to ensure that others take reasonable care of a pupil so that it is responsible for any want of care on their part. He carried out a useful review of the authorities and noted that the case law was against the imposition of such a duty and that to recognise such a duty would be considerable extension of liability in this area. There was no policy reason that would support such an extension.

Comment

This is an important confirmation of the limited extent of the duty owed by schools and local authorities, when caring for children. The only duty owed by those acting in loco parentis is that taken by a reasonably prudent parent, and to take reasonable care in selecting others who may look after the child.

This claimant is suing a range of parties, and although the action against Essex is at an end, the other claims continue. The Court was not faced with an “all or nothing scenario”, and this may have persuaded the court to take a more robust approach to the claim against Essex.

Rebecca Wilson is an associate at Clyde & Co. She can be contacted on 020 7876 609 or by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..