Supreme Court to rule next week on use of section 20 Children Act

The Supreme Court will next week hand down a key ruling on the lawfulness of a council's accommodation of children under section 20 of the Children Act 1989.

In Williams and another v London Borough of Hackney UKSC 2017/0037 the appellants’ children had been taken on 5 July 2007 into police protection pursuant to section 46 of the Children Act 1989 in response to allegations of assault and neglect.

The appellants were granted police bail, a condition of which was that no unsupervised contact was permitted with the children.

The respondent local authority placed the children with foster parents and sought the appellants’ consent to continue the accommodation under section 20 after the police protection period ended.

The appellants shortly thereafter objected to the accommodation beyond 23 July 2007 pursuant to section 20(7) but the children were not returned to them until 11 September 2007 after the bail condition was lifted.

Criminal proceedings against the appellants were later discontinued.

After pursuing complaints to the Local Government Ombudsman, the appellants issued proceedings for damages for misfeasance in public office, negligence, religious discrimination and for breach of their rights under the Human Rights Act 1998.

After a six-day trial, Sir Robert Francis QC, sitting as a deputy judge of the High Court, dismissed the actions for misfeasance, discrimination and negligence but found that Hackney had failed to comply with its statutory duty under the 1989 Act and were liable to pay damages for breach of Article 8 of the ECHR.

However, in January 2017 the Court of Appeal allowed Hackney’s appeal.

Sir Brian Leveson, with whom Lord Justice McFarlane and Lord Justice Burnett, agreed, said: “Although I commend Sir Robert Francis Q.C. for the careful consideration which he gave to the issues in this case, I respectfully disagree with his conclusions ….. In my judgment, along with all the other claims, the claim brought under Article 6 of the 1998 Act for breach of s. 20 of the 1989 Act should have been dismissed and I would allow the appeal accordingly.”

The issue before the Supreme Court was the lawfulness of the accommodation of the appellants’ children by Hackney under section 20 of the Children Act 1989.

The case was heard by Lady Hale, Lord Kerr, Lord Wilson, Lord Carnwath and Lady Black on 14-15 February this year.