Stephen Simblet of Garden Court’s Claims against the Police and Public Authorities team appeared for the successful claimant, W. He was instructed by Bill Uppal of Uppal Taylor Solicitors, Nottingham.
HHJ Hampton (sitting as a High Court judge) has ordered the Chief Constable of Leicestershire and the Leicester City Council to pay a total of £52 000 plus interest. W had been resident in a children’s home in Leicester. A MAPPA Level 3 sex offender, which on the evidence was an offender posing the most risk, was given a council tenancy at an address “a stone’s throw” from the children’s home in which W lived. That decision was taken without any visit to the accommodation proposed for the offender, which the judge found to be a serious failure on the part of the MAPPA process to identify the home and/ or share information with senior staff at the home of the offender’s presence, so that steps could be taken by the home’s staff to observe and provide advice to the children in their care.
The judge ruled that the offender would not have been placed in his accommodation had the police officer made himself aware that there was a children’s home nearby. She also found that the staff at the home had not adequately followed up concerns raised independently by the police that W might be being sexually exploited and that had the MAPPA processes being properly applied, that W would not have encountered his abuser and been abused. The judge found that these were serious errors and had constituted breaches of W’s Article 3 and Article 8 ECHR rights. She also found that the police had been negligent in approving the accommodation for the abuser and that this was a positive act on the police’s part.
This case has been covered in the media, including by the BBC.
Stephen Simblet is a member of the Garden Court’s Claims against the Police and Public Authorities team.
