Are post-Poole waters clearer following HXA and YXA?:HXA v Surrey County Council, YXA (a protected party by his litigation friend the Official Solicitor) v Wolverhampton City Council

Abstract

Following the decision in HXA v Surrey County Council, YXA (a protected party by his litigation friend the Official Solicitor) v Wolverhampton City Council it is reasonable to ask whether the waters will be muddied by an apparent return to a more ambiguous position in respect of local authority liability towards abused children. Since the 2019 decision in Poole the circumstances in which a local authority owes a duty of care towards children seemed almost exclusively to apply to cases where the local authority had assumed parental responsibility for a child and had removed the child from their family, but not in cases where local authorities had omitted to act. Stirring up the post-Poole waters provides an opportunity for the parameters to be widened again.