These areas in which a public body can incur private liability in tort were described by Lord Browne Wilkinson in X v Bedfordshire County Council [1995] 3 All ER 353 (HL).
[3] For an action for breach of statutory duty to succeed: It is possible for a public authority to be liable in the law of negligence.
So, for example, in the Dorset Yacht case the House of Lords decided that if the damage caused by a group of “borstal boys” had been the result of a policy decision to grant them greater freedom, it would not be actionable.
In Hill v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, it was decided that the police owed no general duty of care to potential victims of crime.
A determining factor was that the House of Lords believed that it was the discretion of a chief police officer to decide how available resources should be deployed and which leads should be acted upon and which possibilities ruled out.
It occurs when there is a malicious or deliberate exercise or non-exercise of a statutory or common law power by an official which causes loss to a plaintiff which has been foreseen.