Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

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Key definition

Breach of statutory duty definition

What does Breach of statutory duty mean? In practice, breach of statutory duty describes a civil claim that a defendant failed to comply with a duty created by legislation, and that this failure caused the kind of loss the legislation was designed to prevent. The expression is not defined in a single statute; it is developed in case law and applied across many regulatory and criminal law frameworks. The central question is legislative intention: read in context, did Parliament or the Oireachtas intend the duty to be privately enforceable? A claimant must usually show that the statute imposes a duty on the defendant; they are within the...

Private law claims for breach of statutory duty: availability, negligence overlap, failure to exercise powers, public versus private acts, HRA 1998, health and safety after ERRA 2013 (England and Wales)

Published by a LexisNexis PI & Clinical Negligence expert

Practice notes

What is a private law claim for Breach of statutory duty?

A private law claim for breach of statutory duty arises where:

the defendant was subject to a statutory obligation to take a specified action
that action was not carried out
and the breach caused damage to the claimant

Such a cause of action can be pursued against any entity bound by the duty, whether a Public authority or a private organisation. For instance, section 41 of the Highways Act 1980 enables highway users to bring proceedings for a failure to maintain the highway. Additionally, where a public authority acts in breach of a statutory obligation, an adversely affected individual may seek a public law remedy by applying for Judicial review. However, many statutory duties do not confer a private right to sue. Consequently, most claims against public authorities are framed in negligence rather than for breach of statutory duty. In the personal injury context, by way of example, section 69 of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 amended section 47...

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Catriona Stirling

Cloisters

Catriona is a barrister specialising in the areas of personal injury and clinical negligence, public law and human rights, and employment and equality law....

Web page updated on 21/05/2026

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