Facts: new members of the governing body of a school engaged in a campaign to discredit and undermine the head teacher, as part of an attempt to change the school into a faith school. The local authority became aware of this but failed to take adequate steps to protect the head teacher, who ultimately retired permanently owing to psychiatric ill health.

Judgment: the Court of Appeal (Laws, Sedley and Thomas LJJ) held essentially that because the local authority owed the head teacher a pre-existing common law duty of care (arising out of the employment relationship), its gross failures to discharge its public law responsibilities reasonably amounted to a breach of that duty of care