Facts: the applicants were siblings who had suffered personal injury as a result of abuse and neglect whilst living with their parents. The local social services authority had been aware of the situation for a period of years but had failed to take effective action.

Judgment: the treatment meted out by the parents violated the children’s rights under Article 3 ECHR; moreover, the State was itself in breach of Article 3, in that it had failed in its duty to take measures to provide effective protection to children and other vulnerable persons, including by taking reasonable steps to prevent ill-treatment of which the authorities knew or ought to have known. The applicants had also been denied a remedy, in breach of Article 13 of the ECHR in that, because the House of Lords had determined that the local authority had not owed the applicants a duty of care in negligence, then, notwithstanding the availability of complaints to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board and the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO), the applicants had not had available to them an appropriate means of obtaining a determination of their allegation that the local authority had failed to protect them from inhuman and degrading treatment and the possibility of obtaining compensation. The Court awarded the children pecuniary damages (for loss of earnings, the cost of medical treatment etc) of £8,000, £100,000, £80,000 and £4,000 and non-pecuniary damages of £32,000 each.