The concept of "assumption of responsibility" in the law of negligence

HXA v Surrey County Council; YXA (a protected party by his litigation friend the Official Solicitor) v Wolverhampton City Council [2023] UKSC 52

The Supreme Court has recently turned again to the question of whether local authorities had assumed responsibility to children to protect them from harm suffered at the hands of a parent or a parent's partner. The central issue in this latest case turned on the preliminary question as to whether the claims should be struck out as disclosing no arguable cause of action. Similar issues had been considered some four years earlier by the Supreme Court in Poole v Borough Council v GN and Others [2019] UKSC 25, a case which was referred to frequently in the recent judgment on the matter.