No duty of care for criminal record checks  

Extracts from the article as follows:

[ Jared Ficklin ] explains: “It is clear the courts are not willing to change their approach to whether public bodies, such as the police, have a duty of care in certain circumstances. In that regard, this case upholds a long line of authorities that in the absence of special circumstances, the police do not generally, in the interests of the whole community, owe individual members of the public, be they victims, witnesses or those who are prosecuted, a common law duty of care in performing their operational duties.”

...

“Police have an obligation to include information in the ECRC if it is ‘relevant’ and ought to be included. All too often, as in this case, the police subsume the second stage into the first and any relevant information, no matter how tenuous, is included. This has clear consequences for applicants as it had for Mr Desmond. Their Lordships repeatedly describe Mr Desmond’s loss as purely economic, but the embarrassment and anxiety that must stem from the promulgation of what was in effect a false allegation must have weighed heavily upon him. Practitioners should pay close attention to the application of the two-part test and the efforts the police have made to obtain full details of the included information. As in Mr Desmond’s case, it may be that the police have failed adequately to investigate the circumstances of the event or have reported the facts inaccurately.”

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> 25/1/11 No duty of care for criminal records checks (Lexisweb.co.uk) - read full article