What happened
The Children’s Rights Alliance for England brought judicial review proceedings against the Secretary of State for Justice. It asked the court to order him to identify the children who had been unlawfully restrained while held in privately run secure training centres, and to tell them they could claim compensation.
Four privately run centres took part as interested parties. The Equality and Human Rights Commission intervened in the appeal.
The claim followed the disclosure of the restraint techniques used across the secure training centre estate between 1998 and 2008. The two deaths of 2004, at Hassockfield and at Rainsbrook, lay behind that disclosure. In the first, a boy took his own life hours after a nose distraction technique, later banned, was used on him. In the second, a boy died after restraint. Neither boy is named here.
The outcome
Foskett J dismissed the claim on 11 January 2012 ([2012] EWHC 8 (Admin)). The state had no duty to seek out potential claimants. He said it “probably requires just one former detainee… to pursue a well-publicised claim and others will be alerted”.
The Court of Appeal dismissed the charity’s appeal on 6 February 2013 ([2013] EWCA Civ 34). The right of access to the courts is a duty not to put obstacles in the way of access to justice, not a positive duty to invite claims. No damages were awarded.
What went wrong
The findings are the case. The judge held it “highly likely that large numbers of children were unlawfully restrained in privately-run STCs for at least a decade”, and that there was “widespread unlawful use of restraint within the STC system”, probably until July 2008.
Statutory agencies had failed to take appropriate action to stop it. The Youth Justice Board had given “apparent active promotion” to the methods through “confused thinking” until 2007.
In the Court of Appeal it was undisputed that very few of the children knew at the time that what was being done to them was unlawful.
What it teaches
A sector can run an unlawful practice for a decade with the regulator watching. The defence that staff followed approved methods is what the judgment dismantles: the approval was the failure, not the excuse.
A finding of widespread illegality reached the High Court and produced no compensation, because the route to a claim depended on children who had no reason to believe they had been wronged.
The practical question is not whether a technique is in the manual, but who approved it, on what evidence, and what happens when the evidence changes.
Questions for the room
- If a technique is in the manual and the regulator promotes it, can it still be unlawful? What did this judgment say?
- You are writing a restraint policy. What would have had to be different for these findings not to be made?
- Children saw the restraint as normal and legitimate. What in your setting would stop a child knowing they could complain?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: confirmed. The Court of Appeal case note and Community Care’s report of the first-instance judgment were read, and they agree on the findings and the quotations. The BAILII page for the first-instance judgment returned an anti-scraping block during research, so its quotations here are carried from Community Care.
This is a civil judgment about a system, not an incident. No member of staff is named and no finding is made about any individual. The contractors that ran the centres are not named either; the finding is about the system. Proceedings concluded on 6 February 2013.
Our physical interventions training covers the techniques themselves, and the review that has to sit under them.
Sources
- Mental Health Law Online, 6 February 2013 · https://www.mentalhealthlaw.co.uk/R_(Children%27s_Rights_Alliance_for_England)_v_SSJ_(2013)_EWCA_Civ_34,_(2013)_MHLO_16
- Community Care, 13 January 2012
Reviewed 20 October 2026.