Council pays out damages for defamation by social services team

A council has paid out “substantial” damages for defamation and apologised to a man about whom its social services department circulated false information, a leading claimant law firm has said.

Deighton Pierce Glynn, which acted for the claimant, said: “Our client’s family came into contact with the local authority’s social services department on a number of occasions. On the first occasion a very serious error was made by the local authority when information supplied by a third party was misunderstood and mis-recorded.

“Subsequently, the information was not checked and the false information was circulated both internally within the local authority and to external agencies but not to our client. When the social services file was reopened several years later the false information on the file was assumed to be accurate and tainted in a seriously detrimental way the social services department’s treatment of our client and his family.”

Proceedings were brought in the High Court for defamation and under the Human Rights Act.

Deighton Pierce Glynn said the apology, damages and a correction of the false information had finally brought to an end “a very difficult chapter” for the claimant.

The law firm instructed Lorna Skinner of Matrix Chambers.