Bridget Tatham follows the rise & risk of public sector outsourcing
The public sector has been outsourcing services it would traditionally deliver to contractors for decades; from waste collection, social services, prisons, to offender tagging. Post-general election 2015 an ever-increasingly diverse range of public sector functions are likely to be outsourced fully or, where there are new ways of collaborative working with their private sector contractors, jointly to deliver functions such as construction, health and education.
Avoiding liability
The concern that a public body could avoid its liability when outsourcing a function has been laid to rest in the last 12 months, starting with Woodland v Essex County Council [2013] UKSC 66, [2014] 1 All ER 482, in which Lord Sumption set out five defining characteristics where a public body may not hide behind the principles of the competent independent contractor. Those guiding principles are:
- The claimant is a patient or a child, or for some other reason is especially vulnerable or dependent on the protection of the public body against the risk of injury.
- There is an antecedent relationship between the claimant
