Application across the book’s scenarios
| Scenario | How section 21 could apply |
|---|---|
| Actual care home | The provider designs or tolerates a grossly unsafe system—such as chronic uncovered shifts, suppressed incident reports or falsified care records—and a worker commits section 20 within that system. |
| Sheltered or extra-care housing | Liability depends on which legal entity is the care provider. The housing landlord is not automatically responsible for the separate care company, although its own duties and joint arrangements may be relevant elsewhere. |
| Supported living or home care | Commissioning too few visits, operating impossible travel schedules or recording unwilling relatives as staff may evidence gross management failure when tied to a worker’s section 20 offence and a relevant duty. |
| Community network | A mobile team repeatedly fails because dispatch, handover or escalation systems are grossly defective. The prosecution must connect organisational management to the underlying worker offence. |
| Family separation | Senior management continues a plan known to depend on a removed child or unavailable carer, and a care worker then wilfully neglects the person. Separation supplies context, not automatic liability. |
| What would usually be insufficient | One rogue worker, ordinary management error, breach below the gross threshold, or inability to prove the underlying section 20 offence. |
Section 21 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 addresses qualifying care providers. It is distinct from corporate manslaughter. Broadly, a care worker must commit the section 20 offence, the provider must owe a relevant duty of care to the victim, and the way the provider managed or organised its activities must amount to a gross breach of that duty. The statutory definitions and exclusions must fit the facts.
How the test may be satisfied
Evidence may include senior decisions to run unsafe staffing, leave known visits uncovered, suppress incident reports, falsify completion data or remove the only trained support without a contingency, combined with a section 20 offence by a care worker. One worker’s offence does not automatically prove the provider’s gross breach.
Family separation
If a provider is told that removal of a child or family carer will eliminate essential support, its failure to reassess or replace that care may evidence defective management. Removal without cause does not by itself satisfy section 21; the worker offence, provider duty and gross organisational breach remain essential.
Evidence
Obtain governance minutes, staffing models, escalation policies, commissioning instructions, complaints, missed-visit audits, regulator correspondence, risk registers, budgets, senior emails and the evidence proving the underlying care-worker offence.