Jessica Muurman examines the judgment in Chief Constable of Northamptonshire v Woodcock [2025] EWCA Civ 13, in which the Court of Appeal examined conjoined cases raising the issue of police liability for harm caused by the criminal actions of third parties. 


Background

This appeal combines two cases. Save that both actions concerned police civil liability, they are otherwise unconnected.

In Woodcock v Chief Constable of Northamptonshire Police (“Woodcock”), Ms Woodcock sought to recover damages from the police after she was near-fatally stabbed by a former partner. The police were aware of recent violence and/or threats of violence directed to Ms Woodcock and her children, and had an arrest plan in place due to be executed on the morning of the attack. The police had previously left their contact details with neighbours. Prior to the attack the police had received warning from a neighbour that the ex-partner was outside Ms Woodcock’s home. The police attended promptly. However, the attack had taken place by the time of arrival. The police had not contacted Ms Woodcock to warn her of the increased risk of attack.

The second case, HD, PD, CJ, PJ, OB (by their respective litigation friends) v Chief Constable of Wiltshire Police (“CJ”) concerned a third-party assailant, MP, who was convicted of multiple sexual offences of minors, and the making or possession of indecent images of children. The claimant children, who were victims of the sexual assaults, claimed damages in negligence and/or compensation for a breach of their Article 3 and 8 ECHR rights.  This blog post focuses on the law of negligence, however brief consideration is given to the HRA arguments, below. Criticisms of the police included specific failings of a Detective Sergeant (DS) in retaining the matter outside of their expertise, and more broadly the inactivity of the DS. Further failings were said to be the lack of a system in place to identify the DS’ failings.

The Appeals

In Woodcock, the appeal was brought by the police against the earlier determination that a duty of care was owed by the police to warn Ms Woodcock of the heightened risk of assault. The appeal in CJ was brought by the claimants, who contended that a duty of care was owed in negligence and/or that the police had failed to fulfil the investigatory duty established in Article 3.

Tindall – A Quick Note

At the time this appeal was heard, Tindall v Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police [2024] UKSC 33 had recently been handed down (John-Paul Swoboda has discussed this judgment elsewhere on this blog, available here). The Tindall judgment had not been available to the lower courts in either case.

While an anticipated judgment, Tindall was arguably not a surprising one, largely affirming well-established principles around assumption of responsibility for a duty to be owed in negligence. Where Tindall did provide particularly helpful authority was in relation to the ‘interference principle’; the idea that where a person (D) knows or ought to have known that a person, A, is at risk of harm, and D knows or ought to have known that they have done something to deter or prevent another person, B, from helping A, then the assumption of responsibility exception can be established, and D will owe a duty of care to A.

The Decision – Woodcock

The decision in Woodcock addresses this interference principle head on, with the court determining that the principle was not engaged. While acknowledging that another person, B, had called the police, as they were instructed to, this was not enough to for the Claimant to prove that their case fell within to the exception. The Court noted two particular failings in the Claimant’s case:

  1. There must be a specific and explicit undertaking. There was no evidence of this; the police taking any positive action in the management of a matter known to them was not enough.
  2. It remains for the Claimant to prove that the police prevented someone else from offering help; if B would not have helped in any event, the exception cannot be made out.

The Decision – CJ

The negligence claim was dealt with briefly, with the court rejecting the submission that the failings of the DS were positive acts; while they followed an inappropriate investigatory pathway and prevented other, better-qualified, officers taking the investigation, this route of action did not make matters worse than they would have been but-for any police involvement. For this reason, the claims in negligence failed.

Briefly turning to the HRA claims, these too failed. The threshold of engaging the investigative duty in Article 3 is where there is a specific risk to an individual; it is not met with a generalised future risk. On the facts of this case, once the contact offending was reported it was found the police acted promptly. There was therefore no failure of the Article 3 duty, and the HRA claim failed.

Comment

This judgment could not make plainer that police liability in negligence is the exception and not the rule. It continues a line of cases on the duty to warn, including Mitchell v Glasgow City Council [2009] 1 AC 874 and Hill v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire [1989] AC 53, albeit with a particular slant on the ‘interference principle’. For liability to be established under the interference principle, a claimant must find themselves in exceptional circumstances that fall into the ‘narrow and specific duty to warn’ [127].

Claimants seeking to establish a case in negligence under the interference exception have the difficult task of proving not only what they would have done differently, had they been warned, but also what the would-be intervenor, B, would have done had the police not deterred them from assisting. In cases where the would-be intervenor is unknown to the claimant, this is likely to cause particular practical difficulty. Early consideration should be given how to tackle the evidential burden of both the undertaking and reliance.

Conversely, this judgment will no doubt be welcomed by public authorities, including the police, where the direction in this judgment will likely help inform training within such organisations so as to ensure their communications avoid any assertion of an explicit undertaking.