Blog: Friday 23rd January - Bevan Brittan, Corporate Partner: Hillsborough Law – priorities for local authorities

Hillsborough Law – priorities for local authorities

The deaths of 97 Liverpool football fans at Sheffield’s Hillsborough Stadium in 1989 was the UK’s worst sporting disaster and has resulted in tireless campaigning for justice by families and survivors. Step forward the Public Authority (Accountability) Bill 2025 (known as the Hillsborough Law). Representing a seismic shift in public accountability, local authorities need to get on the front foot to be ready for its implementation.

At its core the Bill seeks to ensure that public authorities and officials act in the public interest and with candour, transparency and frankness. The Bill contains a number of measures including: non means tested legal aid to put families at the centre of inquests and inquiries; and creates new statutory offences for public authorities and public officials of misconduct in public office and misleading the public.

However, perhaps the greatest gear shift comes in the Bill’s creation of a new statutory “duty of candour and assistance” in the course of interacting with inquiries and investigations including local inquiries.  Whilst a last-minute potential amendment has held up the bill’s planned reading on 14^th January this is not an excuse for standing still especially as an amendment to the Bill will mean that the duty of candour and assistance will also impact on local authority run inquiries into specified local authority matters.  This will have an impact not only on anyone participating in any such local authority inquiries, but also on the conduct of those inquiries by local authorities.

The 3 main pillars:

Duty of candour and assistance

Public bodies and officials will be under a statutory duty of candour during inquiries, inquests, and investigations — including non-statutory inquiries. In practice this means proactively disclosing information, even where it is unhelpful. Breaches may result in criminal sanctions, including imprisonment, as well as reputational damage and loss of public trust.

Professional duties of candour

Public authorities must put candour at the heart of internal governance arrangements with professional codes of ethics, that breathe life into the Nolan Principles of honesty, integrity, accountability, selflessness, openness, leadership, and objectivity. Ultimately accountability will rest squarely on leadership.

Offence of misleading the public

It will become a criminal offence for a public authority or official to intentionally or recklessly mislead the public in a seriously improper way. For local authorities there may be something to be said for focusing on areas of likely greatest exposure such as social services impacting on vulnerable adults and children, social housing where safety concerns will be under scrutiny and in the arena of environmental health.

The priorities for action are:

• comprehensive detailed training on the new obligations for senior leaders, so that it is understood the duty of candour applies personally;
• immediate review of existing codes of conduct and ethics policies to see if they match up against the new requirements and have transparency as their focus; and
• an audit of the current approach to complaints handling and investigations coupled with a review of information governance to ensure that information can be efficiently gathered, reliably stored and promptly disclosed during relevant investigations.

 

For advice on training, review of codes and policies and an audit, please contact Joanna Lloyd, Amrita Hurst and Carlton Sadler at Bevan Brittan.