The Trained Bystander Paradox

This piece began as my final-year undergraduate law research paper at the University of Sheffield 2026, where it was awarded 80/100. It asks whether people who voluntarily acquire specialist rescue skills should, in narrowly defined circumstances, owe a limited legal duty to act—and whether that duty should be paired with meaningful protection from liability.

Should Voluntarily-Acquired Rescue Capability Generate a Limited Positive Duty in English Negligence Law?

I. Introduction

A volunteer trained in swift-water rescue stands on the bank of a river. Her dog, certified in canine water rescue, is at her side. Fifty metres downstream, a swimmer enters difficulty. The trained bystander has the capability, the equipment, and the situational awareness to assist. English law imposes no obligation upon her to act. If she does act, she assumes a duty of care for the manner of her intervention and may face civil exposure for harm sustained during a rescue that, had she walked away, would not have been attempted. The most capable person on the riverbank is the person to whom the law speaks most ambivalently.

This essay calls this configuration the trained bystander paradox. Its components are settled features of English tort law: the no-duty-to-rescue rule, robustly affirmed by the Supreme Court in Michael v Chief Constable of South Wales Police;^[1] the doctrine that voluntary intervention triggers a duty of care; and the protective intent expressed in the Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Act 2015, widely characterised at enactment as a Good Samaritan measure but largely symbolic.^[2] Although any intervener owes a duty of care for the manner of intervention, the trained civilian is held to a higher standard than the untrained passer-by, while non-intervention is treated identically across both. The asymmetric exposure is therefore an asymmetry of standard between actors, not between actor and non-actor; but it is real: the citizens most likely to be valuable in emergencies, the off-duty lifeguard, the volunteer water-rescue handler, the wilderness first-aider, the trained door supervisor, are precisely those most exposed when they act and least supported when they do not.

This essay argues, first, that voluntary acquisition of rescue capability is distinguishable from mere presence; second, that English tort law possesses adequate doctrinal resources to recognise a narrow capability-keyed duty without surrendering its autonomy-based foundations; and third, that the trained-civilian sector has developed only partial frameworks for off-duty intervention, a finding that reinforces the case for legal recognition.

The argument proceeds in four parts. Part II sets out the no-duty rule and the doctrinal cracks through which a capability-based exception might emerge. Part III develops the normative case for treating capability as a distinguishable category, drawing on Honoré's outcome-responsibility theory and the criminal-law literature on omissions. Part IV presents original analysis of governance frameworks operated by six trained-civilian organisations in England and Wales, identifying a structural gap between their on-duty and off-duty frameworks. Part V proposes a narrow statutory reform, drawing on the Hansard record of SARAH 2015 and on Hetherington v Fell [2025] EWHC 1487 (KB) to demonstrate the gap between Parliament's intention and the Act's operation.

II. The No-Duty Rule and the Cracks in the Wall

A. The orthodox position

The no-duty-to-rescue rule is among the most settled features of English tort law. Its modern foundations were laid in Stovin v Wise, where Lord Hoffmann distinguished sharply between positive conduct and omission,^[3] and confirmed in Michael, where the Supreme Court declined to recognise a duty of care owed by police to a 999 caller despite the deceased's express plea for assistance.^[4] Robinson v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police clarified that the orthodoxy applies to omissions specifically, leaving conventional duties of care for positive acts intact.^[5]

The rationales offered for the rule fall into three categories: autonomy, drawing on the corrective-justice tradition associated with Weinrib and Stevens;^[6] line-drawing, the question of why this rescuer rather than that one; and practical, the causal and identification difficulties that rescue litigation generates.^[7] Each rationale, however, is in tension with the law's actual treatment of related cases.

B. The cracks: when duty does arise

The orthodox rule is riddled with exceptions, each an implicit recognition that no-duty cannot be absolute. Assumed responsibility generates a duty even on informal undertaking: in Barrett v Ministry of Defence the Ministry was held liable when an officer voluntarily took charge of an unconscious sailor;^[8] Watson v British Boxing Board of Control extended the principle to a regulatory body that had assumed responsibility for medical provision at fights.^[9] Special relationships — schools, custodians, employers — generate positive duties despite the omission/commission distinction.^[10] Control over a third party generates duties on the Dorset Yacht model.^[11] Creation of danger triggers duties of mitigation under Goldman v Hargrave, with an analogous criminal-law principle in R v Miller.^[12]

The most important crack for present purposes is the voluntary intervention rule. While East Suffolk Rivers Catchment Board v Kent is sometimes cited for the proposition that a voluntary intervenor has no duty to complete the task, its modern reading establishes that once a defendant intervenes, they assume a duty not to make matters worse, and arguably a duty of reasonable care for the manner of their conduct.^[13]

C. The asymmetric exposure of the trained bystander

The trained civilian fits none of these categories cleanly. She has not assumed responsibility in any formal sense; she stands in no special relationship to the swimmer; she exercises no control over the danger; she has not created it. She is therefore subject to the orthodox no-duty rule.

But once she intervenes, even by, say, instructing the swimmer to grab a thrown line, she crosses into voluntary-intervenor territory and assumes a duty of care for the manner of her conduct. The standard against which that conduct will be measured is not a sympathetic volunteer-specific standard, but the standard of an ordinarily competent person professing the relevant skill. The unreported but instructive decision in Cattley v St John Ambulance Brigade confirms the point: a St John volunteer aiding a casualty was held to the standard of the First Aid Manual, volunteer status conferring no discount, although the emergency context informed what reasonable performance required.^[14] Cattley's precedential weight is qualified by its unreported, first-instance status; but its reasoning is independently supported by Wilsher's "post held out" principle, has been treated as authoritative by professional first-aid bodies for over three decades, and is unchallenged by contradictory authority. If her training was incomplete, her assessment flawed, or her execution clumsy, the trained civilian may face liability, and even where contributory negligence and emergency conditions would substantially reduce the quantum, exposure to litigation is itself a meaningful burden. The professional rescuer benefits from the structural limits articulated in the Capital & Counties line, duties contingent on assumption of responsibility, not general duties to the public; the trained civilian benefits from no equivalent.^[15]

The result is asymmetric exposure. The trained civilian carries all the costs of a duty without any of its protections, neither the structural limits on professional rescuers' duties, nor a meaningful Good Samaritan immunity, nor the institutional indemnity on-duty volunteers enjoy. SARAH 2015, enacted precisely to address this asymmetry, was judicially noted in only a handful of cases and produced no measurable change in the underlying legal position until almost ten years after Royal Assent.^[16]

This is the trained bystander paradox at its sharpest. The doctrinal architecture of English tort law treats voluntary capability as a source of liability rather than as a source of legitimate authority and a doctrinally recognised imperative to act. The remainder of this essay considers whether and how that architecture should change.

III. The Case for Capability as a Duty-Trigger

A. Outcome responsibility and the moral significance of capability

Tony Honoré's theory of outcome responsibility provides the most useful theoretical framework for what is missing from the orthodox no-duty position. Honoré argued that responsibility for outcomes attaches not merely to those who cause harm directly, but to those whose choices bring them within the orbit of an outcome they could have influenced.^[17] The trained civilian, by voluntarily acquiring rescue capability, has chosen to be the kind of person who can influence outcomes the untrained civilian cannot. This choice is not morally neutral.

Three features distinguish the trained civilian from the merely present. First, the training is voluntary: it is not imposed by the state, nor required by employment, nor incidental to some other activity. Second, it is purposive: training is undertaken with the express object of being able to assist in particular kinds of emergency. Third, it is certified or otherwise demonstrable: the trained civilian's capability is, in most cases, a matter of public record. The law's refusal to draw the moral distinction between her and the untrained bystander is, on the outcome-responsibility view, a doctrinal failure to discriminate where moral discrimination is warranted.

B. The criminal-law parallel

English criminal law is markedly more willing than tort to recognise capability-based duties. In R v Adomako, the House of Lords confirmed that gross negligence manslaughter could be founded on breach of a duty arising from the defendant's professional position.^[18] In R v Evans, the Court of Appeal extended the principle: a defendant who had supplied heroin to her sister and then witnessed her overdose had assumed a duty by her prior conduct, breach of which sustained a manslaughter conviction.^[19] The structural similarity to the assumed-responsibility category in tort is notable: both doctrines accept that voluntary acts placing a person in a position of capability or proximity can generate duties to act, even absent any antecedent transactional relationship. The criminal law has simply applied this insight more readily to non-professional defendants than tort has. Andrew Ashworth's account of omissions liability identifies the criminal-law position as resting on a substantive moral judgment: that capability and proximity together generate a stronger normative claim than the bare no-duty rule allows.^[20]

It might be objected that the divergence between criminal and tort law produces its own coherence: that non-intervention is, presently, the only legally safe course of action, and there is something to be said for a settled rule even if it is unattractive. The objection is real but ultimately mistaken. First, the present arrangement is not stably "safe": the trained civilian who stands by may avoid civil liability but, if she has voluntarily placed herself in a position of capability and proximity in circumstances foreseeably calling for intervention, she is not categorically safe from criminal scrutiny under the Adomako/Evans line. Second, the social value the no-duty rule purports to protect, autonomy and freedom from compelled action — is largely illusory in the trained civilian's case, given that the relevant choice (to acquire capability) has already been made. The "consistency" the present arrangement offers is consistency in the wrong direction: civil law penalises the act, criminal law potentially penalises the omission, and the trained civilian is exposed at both ends.

A more principled version holds that criminal and tort law might legitimately diverge because their remedial logics differ, the high penal threshold of criminal liability constrains the categories of duty it recognises in ways tort liability does not. The point has force, but its limits are clear: Adomako and Evans generate liability only on findings of gross negligence, and the gross-negligence immunity proposed in Part V tracks precisely this threshold, importing into tort the criminal-law constraint that justifies the divergence and so dissolving it.

C. Defining capability doctrinally

The most serious objection to a capability-based duty is that "capability" is too slippery a concept to support legal doctrine. The objection is real but answerable. English tort law has developed sophisticated tools for identifying and measuring professional capacity. Bolam v Friern Hospital Management Committee, modified by Bolitho v City and Hackney Health Authority, establishes the standard of care expected from a person holding themselves out as professionally competent: the defendant is judged against the body of competent opinion in the relevant field.^[21] Wilsher v Essex Area Health Authority refined the test for those who hold themselves out as competent in particular roles, including those not yet fully qualified.^[22] Cattley extended the same family of tests to the volunteer first-aider.

These tests provide the doctrinal building blocks for an operational definition of capability. A trained civilian within the proposed framework would be a person who: (i) holds a current and recognised qualification in a relevant rescue or first-aid discipline; (ii) has, by reason of that qualification, capability materially exceeding that of the lay bystander; and (iii) is in a physical and circumstantial position to deploy that capability without unreasonable risk to herself or others. Each limb borrows from existing doctrine: the first is supplied by the certification and revalidation infrastructure surveyed in Part IV; the second by Wilsher and Cattley; the third by the conventional safety-of-the-rescuer caveat already embedded in the voluntary-intervention case-law. The same family of standards has very recently been deployed to a volunteer organisation in Hetherington v Fell (discussed further in Part V.B), where Ritchie J applied the standard of "a reasonably competent and informed volunteer" — a doctrinal move that could readily be adapted to the trained civilian acting in her personal capacity.

D. Answering the autonomy objection

The most powerful objection comes from the autonomy tradition associated with Weinrib and Stevens. On this view, tort law's structure reflects a commitment to corrective justice between equal autonomous agents, and any duty to act for the benefit of another (absent a transactional or relational basis) is incompatible with that structure.^[23] The deeper version of the Weinrib objection is structural rather than autonomy-based: on Weinrib's view, the form of tort liability is bilateral, linking a doer of injury to a sufferer of injury through a normatively significant relation, and absent any antecedent relation between the trained civilian and the casualty there is no bilateral structure on which liability can rest.

Honoré's outcome-responsibility theory engages this challenge directly. The Honoréan claim is not that the bilateral form should be abandoned, but that the conception of when an antecedent relation arises should be expanded.^[24] Choices that bring an agent within the orbit of a foreseeable outcome, including the choice to acquire and maintain capability, can themselves constitute the relation. The prior choice to be the kind of person who can intervene places the trained civilian in a relation the bilateral structure can recognise. This is structurally analogous to the assumed-responsibility category Weinrib accepts as compatible with corrective justice; the salient difference is that capability-based responsibility is assumed in advance and at large rather than to a specific identified party.

The autonomy concern, more conventionally understood, is also weaker against capability-based duties than against general duties to rescue. It attaches most strongly to compelled action and less strongly to duties arising from voluntarily assumed positions. Moreover, the argument assumes that the alternative is meaningful liberty. In the present configuration, the alternative is asymmetric exposure: the trained civilian has neither the entitlement to act with the protections afforded to professionals nor the freedom from liability afforded to the indifferent. Taken seriously, the autonomy objection may favour a capability-based framework rather than oppose it.

E. The floodgates objection

The other recurrent objection is floodgates: any duty to rescue, however narrow, will produce litigation explosions, identification problems, and insurance crises. This is an empirical claim, and it can be tested. France imposes a general duty under article 223-6 of the Code Pénal; Germany under §323c StGB; Quebec, alone among Canadian provinces, imposes a civil duty under article 1471 of the Civil Code.^[25] None of these jurisdictions has experienced the predicted litigation explosion: the French duty has produced a small but stable caseload concentrated in clear cases of refusal to assist; the German duty is similarly contained.^[26] A related practical objection, that rescue scenarios are evidentially too messy to litigate, given the difficulty of establishing capability, presence, and the manner of intervention after the fact, is also weaker than it once was: routine self-recording among trained civilians, increasingly common in water-rescue and mountain-rescue contexts, supplies a contemporaneous record that substantially reduces the evidential difficulty historically cited as a reason for the no-duty rule.^[27] The narrower point on insurance is also addressable. The trained civilian's off-duty position is currently in an underwriting limbo: organisational indemnity ends at the boundary of formal duty (as the RNLI position in Part IV confirms), and individual policies may treat voluntary intervention with caution where the legal duty position is uncertain.^[28] A capability-based duty paired with a meaningful immunity (Part V) would make trained-civilian off-duty intervention more insurable, replacing the all-or-nothing voluntary-intervention rule with a duty-and-immunity structure within which underwriters could price risk predictably.

This conclusion sets up the analysis in Part IV, which examines whether the English trained-civilian sector has institutional frameworks of its own that would support, or in any way prefigure, a capability-based legal doctrine.

IV. Trained-Civilian Governance Frameworks: A Mixed Picture

This Part presents document analysis of publicly available materials from six trained-civilian organisations operating in England and Wales, selected to constitute a representative range of rescuer types across water, mountain, medical and ski domains: the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI); the Royal Life Saving Society UK (RLSS UK); Surf Life Saving Great Britain (SLSGB); Mountain Rescue England and Wales (MREW); St John Ambulance (SJA); and the British Association of Ski Patrollers (BASP).^[29] The analysis suggests that the sector has developed substantial frameworks for formal, on-duty member conduct, but that frameworks specifically addressing off-duty intervention by trained members are notably underdeveloped, a finding more useful to the argument than the simpler "informal duty framework" thesis would be: the sector's institutional architecture mirrors rather than corrects the asymmetric exposure produced by the legal position identified in Part II.

A. Findings: a comparative summary

The findings across the four governance dimensions most relevant to the doctrinal argument are summarised in Table 1. The substance of the findings is set out below.

Table 1: Trained-civilian governance frameworks — comparative summary

Organisation	Code of conduct	Certification / revalidation	On-duty indemnity	Off-duty framework
RNLI	Yes — Volunteer Code of Conduct (general); alcohol/drugs restrictions during volunteering.	Comprehensive role-based training; competency-managed.	Personal Injury Benefit (PIB), Life Assurance, Personal Accident Cover — limited to "operational duty or exercise".	No formal off-duty framework; off-duty action recognised in retrospect
RLSS UK	Yes — Codes of Conduct apply across staff, volunteers, coaches, instructors, etc.; six core obligations.	160,000+ regulated qualifications and vocational awards annually; NPLQ requires 20 hrs CPD over 2-year validity.	Not specified in publicly available materials.	Not addressed in publicly available codes; off-duty intervention not formally provided for.
SLSGB	Standards housed within Safeguarding Policy; suspension for shortfalls.	Beach lifeguard and rescue qualifications (regional structure).	Not specified in publicly available materials.	Not addressed in publicly available materials.
MREW	Operates through team-level codes; national standards via MREW.	Teams operate national training standards; long induction (typically 12–18 months).	Insurance arrangements administered through MREW; not fully published.	Operational obligation triggered by formal callout; no formal off-duty framework.
SJA	Yes — St John Code of Conduct + Child Safeguarding & Wellbeing Code of Conduct.	Tiered first-aid, advanced and clinical qualifications; revalidation regime.	Not specified in publicly available materials.	Not addressed in publicly available codes; off-duty intervention not formally provided for.
BASP	Patroller-grades framework with conduct expectations; HSE-approved provider since 1992.	Tiered patroller grades; founded 1987 to standardise training; continuing-development requirements.	Not specified in publicly available materials.	Not addressed in publicly available materials.

Codes of conduct. All of the established organisations reviewed publish codes of conduct or equivalent governance documents. The RNLI's Volunteer Code of Conduct sets baseline standards covering health, safety and conduct during volunteering activities, including restrictions on volunteering whilst impaired by alcohol or drugs.^[30] RLSS UK's Codes of Conduct apply across staff, volunteers, club members, coaches, instructors, trainers, assessors, administrators, club officials and event organisers, articulating six core obligations including disciplinary cooperation, conflict-of-interest declaration, and abstention from alcohol and illegal substances during participation.^[31] SLSGB's standards (housed within its Safeguarding Policy) require members to act responsibly and safely, with membership suspension for shortfalls.^[32] SJA volunteers must abide by both the St John Code of Conduct and the separate Child Safeguarding and Wellbeing Code of Conduct.^[33] What these codes do not consistently address, on the publicly available materials, is off-duty intervention by a trained member encountering an emergency in their personal capacity. Their visible content is concerned with conduct during organisational activity.

Certification and revalidation. The qualification architecture is the most developed feature of the sector and the most directly relevant to the proposal in Part III(C). RLSS UK alone certifies more than 160,000 regulated qualifications and non-regulated vocational training awards annually.^[34] The National Pool Lifeguard Qualification requires 20 hours of ongoing Continued Professional Development over each two-year validity period, with renewal extending the qualification by a further two years; equivalent revalidation requirements operate for First Aid at Work qualifications.^[35] BASP, founded in winter 1987 specifically to standardise training for ski patrollers in British ski areas, operates a tiered patroller-grades system with continuing-development requirements.^[36] The crucial structural feature is that the sector treats capability as a maintained status, not a one-off acquisition; a feature directly supportive of the operational definition of capability proposed in Part III(C).

Insurance and indemnity. This is the most significant finding, and it cuts against the assumption that trained-civilian organisations have developed comprehensive support for off-duty intervention. The RNLI's Personal Injury Benefit (PIB) scheme is explicitly limited to financial assistance for loss of earnings as a result of injury "sustained whilst volunteering on RNLI operational duty or exercise".^[37] The accompanying wellbeing arrangements similarly focus on the consequences of on-duty exposure to traumatic incidents.^[38] Equivalent on-duty/off-duty distinctions are consistent with publicly available materials from comparator organisations, although precise indemnity texts are typically not published in full. The doctrinal significance is considerable: the institutional architecture of the most developed trained-civilian organisation in the sector does not extend protection to the very off-duty scenarios this essay considers.

Operational obligations. MREW provides the clearest example of an organisational quasi-duty: members of its 47 volunteer mountain-rescue teams across England and Wales are expected to be on call to respond to call-outs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, prepared to leave home or work at a moment's notice.^[39] This is the most duty-like obligation observed in the sector, but it is triggered by formal callout, not by off-duty encounter. A mountain-rescue volunteer who happens upon a casualty while out walking with family is not on a callout; the formal duty does not, in its terms, apply. Off-duty intervention is recognised in retrospect, not provided for in advance. The July 2025 commendation by the Metropolitan Police of Mark Pusey, an off-duty RNLI volunteer who recovered an unconscious woman from the Thames and performed CPR until she resumed breathing, is illustrative.^[40] Mr Pusey's own observation, "as volunteers we are never really off service and I felt a duty to do what I could to help", captures the gap precisely: a felt sense of duty in the absence of any institutional or legal framework giving that duty content or protection.

B. Analysis

The findings produce a more nuanced picture than a straightforward "informal duty framework" hypothesis would suggest. The trained-civilian sector has developed extensive frameworks for formal organisational activity, codes of conduct, qualification regimes, on-duty indemnity, formal callout obligations, but the off-duty dimension of those frameworks is markedly underdeveloped. The asymmetric exposure identified in Part II is therefore not just a feature of the legal position; it is structurally mirrored in the sector's own institutional architecture.

This has three implications. First, it deepens the asymmetric exposure analysis: the trained civilian who acts off-duty faces not only legal exposure but parallel institutional exposure, her own organisation's indemnity likely applying only on-duty. Second, it qualifies the floodgates response: the institutional architecture necessary to support a capability-based duty (certification, revalidation, professional standards, formal disciplinary processes) is well-developed and operational at scale; only its off-duty dimension is underdeveloped. The reform would therefore require organisational adaptation, not the construction of wholly new institutional frameworks. Third, the finding suggests a positive feedback case for reform: the current legal position discourages off-duty intervention, and the sector, plausibly in response, though direct evidence of the causal link is inferential, has not built off-duty governance frameworks. A capability-based duty paired with a meaningful immunity would change that incentive structure and provide the legal scaffolding within which sectoral development could occur. The sector is partway to the framework the reform would require: the certification and qualification infrastructure is in place; the off-duty governance and indemnity infrastructure is not. The reform is not asking the law to recognise something the sector has already built; it is asking the law to provide the foundation on which the sector can build it.

V. Reform and the Failure of SARAH 2015

A. The legislative intention behind SARAH 2015

The Bill that became SARAH was introduced by Chris Grayling MP, then Lord Chancellor, in 2014. Its stated purpose was to encourage volunteering, social action, and intervention by reassuring potential rescuers that the courts would take account of their motivations and conduct.^[41] The Hansard record discloses three notable features. First, the Government's case for the Bill rested almost entirely on perception rather than on evidence of a substantive liability problem. Second, the Bill attracted unusually withering parliamentary criticism. In the Lords debates, Lord Pannick described the Bill as legislation of which, in "40 years of studying law", he could not "remember a more pointless, indeed fatuous, piece of legislation than clause 2 of this Bill, with the possible exception of clauses 3 and 4".^[42] Third, the Bill contained no operational provision: its three substantive sections directed the courts to "have regard" to social action, responsibility, and heroism, but did not modify the underlying duty or standard of care.^[43] The Bill was nevertheless presented as a meaningful intervention in the existing law.

B. The Act's operation in practice

The Act has produced strikingly little measurable change. For almost a decade after Royal Assent it was effectively dormant in the reported case-law.^[44] The first reported case in which the Act was successfully relied upon by a defendant in a civil claim was Hetherington v Fell & Ferryhill Wheelers Cycling Club,^[45] decided in June 2025.

The decision repays close attention. Ritchie J held that the volunteer-run cycling club owed a Caparo-grounded duty of care to participants, articulated as a five-stage obligation to identify hazards, assess risk, identify mitigation, communicate the assessment to members, and review it periodically. The standard of care he applied, however, was that of "a reasonably competent and informed volunteer", not that of a sporting-events organiser, a deliberate choice importing a tailored standard sensitive to the duty-bearer's volunteer status rather than holding the club to a professional benchmark.^[46] SARAH 2015 operated alongside this analysis, reinforcing rather than producing the conclusion that the club had discharged its duty.

Hetherington matters in two ways. First, it confirms, as Lord Pannick predicted a decade earlier, that SARAH has not altered the underlying duty of care or provided meaningful immunity: the Act's "have regard" formula has now been deployed once, in support of an outcome the common law would have produced anyway, and that is the high-water mark of its operational effect. Second, Hetherington shows that English law is already producing capability-and-context-sensitive standards of care for volunteers, drawing on the Bolam/Bolitho/Wilsher/Cattley tradition this essay has relied upon. The proposed reform extends an emerging doctrinal pattern rather than introducing a new species of duty.

Parliament intended SARAH to encourage capable intervention but failed to enact a measure capable of achieving that effect, an intention evident on the face of the parliamentary record (the Grayling Second Reading speech in particular, n 41 above) and unobjectionable as a matter of legislative history. The reform proposed below seeks to give effect to that intention through doctrinally substantive means.

C. The proposed reform

The proposed reform pairs a narrow capability-based duty with a meaningful Good Samaritan immunity.

The duty

A person owes a duty to take such steps as are reasonable in light of their training to alleviate an emergency where —

(a) the person holds a current and recognised qualification in a relevant rescue, first-aid, or emergency-response discipline;

(b) the person is present at an emergency in which their training is materially relevant; and

The duty is satisfied by reasonable assessment, communication of relevant information to emergency services, and (where safe) deployment of training.

The immunity

A person who acts in good faith in discharge of the duty, or who acts in good faith in the absence of a duty, is not liable for harm caused by her intervention provided that her conduct was not grossly negligent.^[47] The "grossly negligent" threshold is doctrinally familiar: it tracks the standard for criminal liability in Adomako, generates a clear factual question for the tribunal, avoids the indeterminacy of an "ordinary negligence with social-context modifiers" approach which SARAH 2015 itself has been shown to produce, and aligns with the standards adopted in comparable jurisdictions (the Quebec good-faith exception and the gross-negligence carve-outs typical in North American Good Samaritan statutes). It is as close to immunity as can reasonably be expected in a doctrinal system that retains accountability for serious failings.

The interaction

The duty addresses the asymmetric exposure problem identified in Part II by recognising that capability creates legitimate authority to act; the immunity addresses the perverse-incentive problem by ensuring that capable action does not generate disproportionate liability.

The mechanism of reform: statutory, not judicial

The proposed reform is offered as legislative, and not as judicial development. Three reasons favour this route. First, the duty and immunity operate together: only statute can deliver both in matching form, because immunities are constitutionally Parliament's business and not amenable to judicial creation. A duty developed judicially in the right test case, extending Hetherington's tailored-standard reasoning from organisations to individuals, would remain incomplete without statutory immunity. Second, the reform sits in direct succession to SARAH 2015 and addresses the same problem with the operational substance SARAH lacked. Third, Hetherington itself supports rather than displaces the statutory route: the doctrinal materials are already in place, the courts having demonstrated the relevant doctrinal tools, but able to go only so far without statutory backing. A successor statute would codify and complete a doctrinal direction the courts have prefigured.

The structural shape of the proposed reform is reflected in the positive-obligations jurisprudence under Article 2 ECHR. Osman v United Kingdom established that the state has positive operational obligations to protect life where it knew or ought to have known of a real and immediate risk to identifiable individuals.^[48] Rabone v Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust extended Osman to NHS Trusts in respect of voluntary mental-health patients, rejecting formal status (detention) as the trigger for the duty in favour of a substantive test focused on capability and knowledge^[49], precisely the move the proposed reform makes in respect of trained civilians.

The objection that Article 2 applies vertically (citizen–state) while the proposed reform applies horizontally (between private parties) narrows the analogy but does not undermine it: Osman itself concerned protection against a private third party, horizontal positive obligations under the ECHR are well-established, and the Rabone reasoning turns on capability and knowledge, not the duty-bearer's public character. That said, the Rabone duty also rests on substantive assumption of responsibility, with no direct private-law analogue for the trained civilian. The analogy is therefore diagnostic, not generative: it shows that English law is not conceptually allergic to positive obligations grounded in capability, knowledge and foreseeable need.

D. Anticipated objections

Three objections are likely. First, that the duty is too vague to support litigation: Part III's definition (current qualification, materially relevant capability, reasonable safety) supplies the necessary specificity, drawing on the Bolam/Bolitho/Wilsher tradition and reinforced by Cattley. Second, that the duty would chill volunteer recruitment: Part IV's analysis suggests this concern requires qualification rather than dismissal, the on-duty governance frameworks reviewed there are well-developed and would not be disturbed; what the proposal would alter is the off-duty position, where neither legal nor (for the most part) institutional protection is presently provided. The chilling-effect concern also assumes a level of legal awareness among trained civilians that may not in fact obtain; the theoretical risk of chilling must in any event be weighed against the present situation in which the trained civilian is exposed both legally and institutionally for any off-duty intervention. Third, that the duty is inconsistent with the autonomy foundations of negligence: the response, developed in Part III, is that the duty arises from voluntarily assumed capability rather than from compelled action, and is therefore congruent with the existing categories of assumed responsibility.

The reform is narrow. It imposes no general duty to rescue, requires nothing of non-trained citizens, and extends no liability to uninvolved third parties. One downstream consequence does warrant acknowledgement: where the duty depends on the trained civilian's qualification, certifying bodies could in principle be drawn into litigation on theories of negligent certification or inadequate training. This is a real prospect, but it is not unique to the proposed reform; the same theories are already available in the existing on-duty cases, and the gross-negligence immunity does not extend to certifying bodies' own conduct.^[50] The reform aligns negligence doctrine with the moral salience of voluntary capability, with the empirical reality that the trained-civilian sector has the institutional foundations on which the proposed duty could be built, and with the legislative intention behind SARAH 2015, and, more broadly, the Compensation Act 2006.^[51]

A more general qualification should be acknowledged. The proposed duty is consistent with the trajectory of English negligence law, the Bolam/Bolitho/Wilsher/Cattley tradition, extended to volunteers in Hetherington, and the capability-and-knowledge structure of positive obligations under Article 2 evident in Rabone, rather than doctrinally inevitable. The materials canvassed invite the reform; they do not compel it. The essay's claim is the moderate one: that the materials make the reform doctrinally tractable, that the perverse incentives identified in Part II provide the normative reason to accept the invitation, and that the institutional infrastructure analysed in Part IV would absorb the reform without disruption.

E. The limits of the proposed duty

The duty should not apply to expired qualifications, intoxicated or otherwise impaired rescuers, interventions falling outside the rescuer's certified training, situations requiring specialist professional command, or cases where emergency services have already assumed operational control. Nor should it convert every trained hobbyist into a standing public authority owing duties at large. The duty's purpose is narrower: to recognise capability only where qualification, proximity, knowledge and safe opportunity coincide. Outside that conjunction, the no-duty rule continues to operate undisturbed.

VI. Conclusion

This essay has argued that English law's treatment of the trained bystander is incoherent in three connected ways. First, the no-duty rule combines with the doctrine of voluntary intervention and a failed Good Samaritan immunity to produce asymmetric exposure: the trained civilian carries the costs of a duty without its protections. Second, the rule treats capability as legally insignificant despite the moral intuition (supported by Honoré's outcome-responsibility theory and reflected in the criminal law's treatment of capability-based omissions) that voluntary acquisition of rescue capability is morally distinguishable from mere presence. Third, the rule's failure is mirrored in the institutional architecture of the trained-civilian sector itself, which has developed extensive frameworks for on-duty governance but provides only limited support for the off-duty intervention the law most plainly fails to recognise.

The reform is narrow and tractable: a successor statute to SARAH 2015 enacting both a capability-based duty and a meaningful Good Samaritan immunity. It draws on doctrinal tools already in the system (the Bolam/Bolitho/Cattley family, the assumed-responsibility category, the capability-sensitive standard articulated in Hetherington) and on the qualification and revalidation infrastructure the trained-civilian sector has already built. It corrects the perverse incentive structure produced by current doctrine, and gives substantive effect to the legislative intention behind SARAH 2015, an intention which, ten years after Royal Assent, that Act has failed to deliver.

The argument is not that English law should adopt a French-style duty to rescue. It is that capability is a workable basis for limited positive duties, narrower than the continental models, more precise than SARAH 2015, and more candid than an arrangement in which the law praises trained volunteers in public statements and exposes them in court. The trained bystander paradox is doctrinally artefactual rather than foundational, and is capable of resolution through doctrinally available means.

The law's present mistake is not that it declines to compel rescue from the unwilling; it is that it declines to distinguish between mere presence in the face of need and capability deliberately acquired, maintained, and brought into contact with foreseeable harm. Closing that distinction is the work of a single Act, and is overdue.

Bibliography — The Trained Bystander Paradox

CASES

Alexandrou v Oxford [1993] 4 All ER 328 (CA)

Barrett v Ministry of Defence [1995] 1 WLR 1217 (CA)

Bolam v Friern Hospital Management Committee [1957] 1 WLR 582 (QB)

Bolitho v City and Hackney Health Authority [1998] AC 232 (HL)

Capital & Counties plc v Hampshire County Council [1997] QB 1004 (CA)

Carmarthenshire County Council v Lewis [1955] AC 549 (HL)

Cattley v St John Ambulance Brigade (QB, 25 November 1988, unreported)

East Suffolk Rivers Catchment Board v Kent [1941] AC 74 (HL)

Goldman v Hargrave [1967] 1 AC 645 (PC)

Hayden v Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust [2016] EWHC 1121 (QB)

Hetherington (by his father and litigation friend Hetherington) v Fell & Ferryhill Wheelers Cycling Club [2025] EWHC 1487 (KB)

Home Office v Dorset Yacht Co Ltd [1970] AC 1004 (HL)

Kent v Griffiths [2001] QB 36 (CA)

Michael v Chief Constable of South Wales Police [2015] UKSC 2, [2015] AC 1732

OLL Ltd v Secretary of State for Transport [1997] 3 All ER 897 (QB)

Osman v United Kingdom (1998) 29 EHRR 245

R v Adomako [1995] 1 AC 171 (HL)

R v Evans [2009] EWCA Crim 650, [2009] 1 WLR 1999

R v Miller [1983] 2 AC 161 (HL)

Rabone v Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust [2012] UKSC 2, [2012] 2 AC 72

Reeves v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis [2000] 1 AC 360 (HL)

Robinson v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police [2018] UKSC 4, [2018] AC 736

Stansbie v Troman [1948] 2 KB 48 (CA)

Stovin v Wise [1996] AC 923 (HL)

Watson v British Boxing Board of Control Ltd [2001] QB 1134 (CA)

Wilsher v Essex Area Health Authority [1988] AC 1074 (HL)

Wilsons & Clyde Coal Co Ltd v English [1938] AC 57 (HL)

LEGISLATION AND TREATIES

Civil Code of Quebec, art 1471

Code Pénal (France), art 223-6

Compensation Act 2006

European Convention on Human Rights, art 2

Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Act 2015

Strafgesetzbuch (Germany), § 323c

BOOKS AND EDITED COLLECTIONS

Honoré T, Responsibility and Fault (Hart 1999)

Menlowe M and McCall Smith A (eds), The Duty to Rescue: The Jurisprudence of Aid (Dartmouth 1993)

Stevens R, Torts and Rights (OUP 2007)

Weinrib EJ, The Idea of Private Law (rev edn, OUP 2012)

CONTRIBUTIONS TO EDITED COLLECTIONS

Cadoppi A, 'Failure to Rescue and the Continental Criminal Law' in M Menlowe and A McCall Smith (eds), The Duty to Rescue: The Jurisprudence of Aid (Dartmouth 1993)

JOURNAL ARTICLES

Ashworth A, 'The Scope of Criminal Liability for Omissions' (1989) 105 LQR 424

Bagshaw J, 'The Duties of Care of Emergency Service Providers' [1999] LMCLQ 71

Goudkamp J, 'Restating the Common Law? The Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Act 2015' (2017) 37 LS 577

Nolan D, 'The Liability of Public Authorities for Failing to Confer Benefits' (2011) 127 LQR 260

Tulkens F, 'The Paradoxical Relationship between Criminal Law and Human Rights' (2011) 9 JICJ 577

Williams G, 'Criminal Omissions – The Conventional View' (1991) 107 LQR 86

REPORTS AND PRACTITIONER PUBLICATIONS

Resuscitation Council UK, CPR, AEDs and the Law (5th edn, Resuscitation Council UK 2010)

Surf Life Saving Great Britain, Safeguarding Guidance (SLSGB 2023)

Todd J QC and Corkill E, 'Standards of Care During First-Aid Treatment'

PARLIAMENTARY MATERIALS

HC Deb 21 July 2014, vol 584 (Second Reading, Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Bill)

HL Deb 4 November 2014, vol 756 (Second Reading)

HL Deb 15 December 2014, vol 758, col 16 (Report stage)

HC Deb 2 February 2015 (Report stage)

ONLINE SOURCES

British Association of Ski Patrollers, 'About Us' (BASP) <https://www.basp.org.uk/about-us/> accessed 9 May 2026

British Association of Ski Patrollers, 'Patroller Grades' (BASP) <https://www.basp.org.uk/ski-patrol/patroller-grades/> accessed 9 May 2026

Compliance People, 'Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Act (SARAH)' <https://thecompliancepeople.co.uk/updates/news/social-action-responsibility-and-heroism-act-sarah/> accessed 9 May 2026

Farrar's Building, 'The First Reported Case on the Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Act 2015' <https://www.farrarsbuilding.co.uk/the-first-reported-case-on-the-social-action-responsibility-and-heroism-act-2015/> accessed 9 May 2026

Kirk O, 'The First Reported Case on the Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Act 2015' (Farrar's Building, 12 November 2025) <https://www.farrarsbuilding.co.uk/the-first-reported-case-on-the-social-action-responsibility-and-heroism-act-2015/> accessed 9 May 2026

Kore Wellness, 'National Pool Lifeguard Qualification (NPLQ)' <https://www.korewellness.co.uk/courses/national-pool-lifeguard-nplq/> accessed 9 May 2026

Law Gazette, 'High Court clears cycling club of liability in Part 20 proceedings brought by car driver' (19 June 2025) <https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/cycling-club-cleared-of-liability-over-time-trial-crash/5123632.article> accessed 9 May 2026

Mountain Rescue England and Wales, 'How It Works' (MREW) <https://www.mountain.rescue.org.uk/how-it-works/> accessed 9 May 2026

Royal Life Saving Society UK, 'Codes of Conduct Policy' (RLSS UK) <https://www.rlss.org.uk/codes-of-conduct-policy> accessed 9 May 2026

Royal Life Saving Society UK, 'Our Qualifications' (RLSS UK) <https://www.rlss.org.uk/Pages/Category/our-qualifications> accessed 9 May 2026

Royal National Lifeboat Institution, 'Alcohol and Drug Awareness Toolkit for RNLI Volunteers, Staff and Managers' (RNLI 2017) <https://supporttool.rnli.org/-/media/rnli/downloads/170504_alcoholdrugsmisuse_policytoolkit_a4_aw_web.pdf> accessed 9 May 2026

Royal National Lifeboat Institution, 'Off-Duty RNLI Volunteer Receives Commendation from Met Police' (RNLI News, 21 July 2025) <https://rnli.org/news-and-media/2025/july/21/off-duty-rnli-volunteer-receives-commendation-from-met-police> accessed 9 May 2026

Royal National Lifeboat Institution, 'Volunteer Code of Conduct Poster' (RNLI) <https://supporttool.rnli.org/-/media/rnli/downloads/volunteer_zone/volunteer_code_of_conduct_poster.pdf> accessed 9 May 2026

Royal National Lifeboat Institution, 'Volunteer Wellbeing' (RNLI) <https://rnli.org/support-us/volunteer/volunteer-zone/learning-wellbeing-and-benefits/wellbeing> accessed 9 May 2026

St John Ambulance, 'Our Policies' (St John Ambulance) <https://www.sja.org.uk/policies/> accessed 9 May 2026

WeCovr, 'Life Insurance for RNLI Volunteers UK' <https://wecovr.com/guides/life-insurance-for-rnli-volunteers-uk/> accessed 9 May 2026

Weightmans, 'Good News for Insurers: SARH Act Used to Defend Liability Claim' <https://www.weightmans.com/media-centre/news/good-news-for-insurers-sarh-act-used-to-defend-liability-claim/> accessed 9 May 2026

[1]Michael v Chief Constable of South Wales Police [2015] UKSC 2, [2015] AC 1732.

[2]Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Act 2015 ("SARAH"). For early critique, see J Goudkamp, "Restating the Common Law? The Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Act 2015" (2017) 37 LS 577.

[3]Stovin v Wise [1996] AC 923 (HL) 943 (Lord Hoffmann): "It is one thing for the law to say that a person who undertakes some activity shall take reasonable care not to cause damage to others. It is another thing for the law to require that a person who is doing nothing in particular shall take steps to prevent another from suffering harm from the acts of third parties or natural causes."

[4]Michael (n 1) [97] (Lord Toulson): "The fact that one person is in danger does not, without more, make those in a position to help responsible for that danger."

[5]Robinson v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police [2018] UKSC 4, [2018] AC 736 [34]–[37] (Lord Reed). The case clarifies that the no-duty-for-omissions rule is an exception to the ordinary application of negligence principles, not a displacement of ordinary duties for positive acts.

[6]E Weinrib, The Idea of Private Law (rev edn, OUP 2012) ch 6; R Stevens, Torts and Rights (OUP 2007) ch 1.

[7]See generally J Bagshaw, "The Duties of Care of Emergency Service Providers" [1999] LMCLQ 71; D Nolan, "The Liability of Public Authorities for Failing to Confer Benefits" (2011) 127 LQR 260.

[8]Barrett v Ministry of Defence [1995] 1 WLR 1217 (CA).

[9]Watson v British Boxing Board of Control Ltd [2001] QB 1134 (CA).

[10]See e.g. Carmarthenshire CC v Lewis [1955] AC 549 (HL) (school); Reeves v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis [2000] 1 AC 360 (HL) (custody); Wilsons & Clyde Coal Co Ltd v English [1938] AC 57 (HL) (employer).

[11]Home Office v Dorset Yacht Co Ltd [1970] AC 1004 (HL).

[12]Goldman v Hargrave [1967] 1 AC 645 (PC); Stansbie v Troman [1948] 2 KB 48 (CA); R v Miller [1983] 2 AC 161 (HL).

[13]East Suffolk Rivers Catchment Board v Kent [1941] AC 74 (HL); Alexandrou v Oxford [1993] 4 All ER 328 (CA). The "duty not to make matters worse" reading is endorsed in Capital & Counties plc v Hampshire CC [1997] QB 1004 (CA) 1035.

[14]Cattley v St John Ambulance Brigade (QB, 25 November 1988, unreported), discussed in Resuscitation Council UK, CPR, AEDs and the Law (5th edn, 2010); J Todd QC and E Corkill, "Standards of care during COVID-19" (39 Essex Chambers, 2020). The judge held that the volunteer "or any other person holding himself out as a first-aider" must meet the standard set by the First Aid Manual — i.e. the standard of an ordinarily competent first-aider, with no doctrinal discount for volunteer status. The reasoning is doctrinally orthodox (it applies Bolam to a non-professional holding herself out as competent), is unchallenged in the ensuing 38 years by any contradictory authority that the writer has been able to identify, and has been consistently cited by professional resuscitation and first-aid bodies in their volunteer-facing guidance (see e.g. Resuscitation Council UK, above). Its precedential force is therefore stronger than the bare procedural status (unreported QBD decision) might suggest, although the case would not by itself bind a higher court.

[15]Capital & Counties plc v Hampshire CC (n 13); Kent v Griffiths [2001] QB 36 (CA); OLL Ltd v Secretary of State for Transport [1997] 3 All ER 897 (QB). Together these cases establish that emergency services owe limited duties contingent on assumption of responsibility, not general duties to the public at large.

[16]For most of the decade following Royal Assent in February 2015, SARAH was effectively dormant in the reported case-law: see the discussion at nn 44–45 below. The first reported case in which a defendant successfully relied on the Act was Hetherington v Fell & Ferryhill Wheelers Cycling Club [2025] EWHC 1487 (KB), decided 16 June 2025.

[17]T Honoré, Responsibility and Fault (Hart 1999) ch 1 ("Responsibility and Luck: The Moral Basis of Strict Liability"). Honoré argues that outcomes attach to agents in virtue of the choices that bring them within the orbit of those outcomes, irrespective of culpability in any narrow sense.

[18]R v Adomako [1995] 1 AC 171 (HL). The duty in Adomako arose from the defendant's position as the anaesthetist responsible for the patient; capability and responsibility were treated as inseparable.

[19]R v Evans [2009] EWCA Crim 650, [2009] 1 WLR 1999. The Court of Appeal accepted that prior conduct (supplying heroin) created a duty to act when the foreseeable risk materialised.

[20]A Ashworth, "The Scope of Criminal Liability for Omissions" (1989) 105 LQR 424; cf G Williams, "Criminal Omissions – The Conventional View" (1991) 107 LQR 86. Ashworth's "social responsibility" thesis remains the most cogent defence of capability-based criminal duties.

[21]Bolam v Friern Hospital Management Committee [1957] 1 WLR 582 (QB); Bolitho v City and Hackney Health Authority [1998] AC 232 (HL).

[22]Wilsher v Essex Area Health Authority [1987] QB 730 (CA), affirmed [1988] AC 1074 (HL). The case confirms that the standard is that of the post held out, not the post actually occupied — a feature crucial to the proposed treatment of trained civilians.

[23]See M Menlowe and A McCall Smith (eds), The Duty to Rescue: The Jurisprudence of Aid (Dartmouth 1993), particularly the contributions presenting the autonomy-based critique of rescue duties.

[24]For the structural engagement: Honoré's outcome-responsibility theory specifically responds to the Weinrib challenge by widening the conception of when an antecedent relation between agents arises, rather than abandoning the bilateral form altogether. See T Honoré, Responsibility and Fault (Hart 1999) chs 1, 7; cf E Weinrib, Corrective Justice (OUP 2012), particularly the discussion of "doer and sufferer" as correlatively-situated parties. The fit between the two is uneasy but not strictly inconsistent: Weinrib's account constrains the form of liability, Honoré's theory addresses who counts as a relevantly-situated agent for the purpose of that form. The capability-based duty operates within Weinrib's structural constraint (it is bilateral, between trained-capable defendant and casualty-claimant) while drawing on Honoré's broader conception of how the relevant relation arises.

[25]Code Pénal art 223-6 (France); Strafgesetzbuch §323c (Germany); Civil Code of Quebec art 1471. For comparative analysis, see A Cadoppi, "Failure to Rescue and the Continental Criminal Law" in Menlowe and McCall Smith (n 23) ch 4.

[26]Empirical assessment is necessarily limited by reporting thresholds, but commentaries on the French and German experience consistently report contained caseloads. See e.g. F Tulkens, "The Paradoxical Relationship between Criminal Law and Human Rights" (2011) 9 JICJ 577, 586–588 on prosecutorial restraint in France under art 223-6.

[27]The prevalence of body-worn recording during training and operations is documented in the sector's own training materials and post-incident review practices: see e.g. the routine use of body-worn cameras in swift-water rescue training described in RNLI and Mountain Rescue training reports, and the wider documentation of GoPro and similar action-camera use among water-rescue practitioners. A systematic empirical study of the prevalence and use of such recording among English trained-civilian organisations would extend the present analysis.

[28]The publicly available materials surveyed in Part IV, particularly the RNLI Personal Injury Benefit scheme, which is explicitly limited to on-duty injury, confirm the institutional limit. The point on individual policies is supported by industry guidance treating intervention as a coverage edge-case: see e.g. WeCovr, "Life Insurance for RNLI Volunteers UK", https://wecovr.com/guides/life-insurance-for-rnli-volunteers-uk/, summarising the on-duty limitation of RNLI cover and the consequential individual-policy exposure for off-duty action.

[29]All organisational materials referenced in this Part are publicly available on the relevant organisations' websites.

[30]RNLI, Volunteer Code of Conduct Poster and accompanying Volunteer Code of Conduct materials, available via the RNLI Volunteer Zone at https://supporttool.rnli.org/-/media/rnli/downloads/volunteer_zone/volunteer_code_of_conduct_poster.pdf; see also RNLI, Alcohol and Drug Awareness Toolkit for RNLI Volunteers, Staff and Managers (RNLI 2017), https://supporttool.rnli.org/-/media/rnli/downloads/170504_alcoholdrugsmisuse_policytoolkit_a4_aw_web.pdf.

[31]RLSS UK, "Codes of Conduct Policy", https://www.rlss.org.uk/codes-of-conduct-policy.

[32]SLSGB, Safeguarding Guidance (SLSGB 2023), https://www.slsgb.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Safeguarding-Guidance.pdf, which houses the SLSGB Code of Conduct, Equal Opportunities Policy, and Fair Play Code.

[33]St John Ambulance, "Our Policies", https://www.sja.org.uk/policies/.

[34]RLSS UK, "Our Qualifications", https://www.rlss.org.uk/Pages/Category/our-qualifications: "Every year we certify more than 160,000 regulated qualifications and non-regulated vocational training awards".

[35]See e.g. Kore Wellness, "National Pool Lifeguard Qualification (NPLQ)", https://www.korewellness.co.uk/courses/national-pool-lifeguard-nplq/, summarising the official NPLQ Generation 10 renewal requirements: 20 hours of CPD over the two-year validity period covering in-water rescue (≥4hrs), CPR (≥4hrs), first aid (≥4hrs), and lifeguard theory (≥4hrs), with renewal extending the qualification by a further two years.

[36]BASP, "About Us", https://www.basp.org.uk/about-us/, and "Patroller Grades", https://www.basp.org.uk/ski-patrol/patroller-grades/. BASP was founded in winter 1987 to standardise training for ski patrollers in British ski areas; it became an HSE-approved provider of First Aid in 1992.

[37]RNLI, "Get help with your wellbeing as an RNLI volunteer", https://rnli.org/support-us/volunteer/volunteer-zone/learning-wellbeing-and-benefits/wellbeing, describing the Personal Injury Benefit (PIB) scheme as "financial assistance towards a loss of earning incurred as a result of an injury sustained whilst volunteering on RNLI operational duty or exercise" (emphasis added).

[38]ibid; the wellbeing materials also describe Trauma Risk Management (TRiM) as a "voluntary and confidential peer-support system designed to assist any RNLI person who has been involved in or exposed to a potentially traumatic incident as part of their RNLI role" (emphasis added).

[39]Mountain Rescue England and Wales, "How it works", https://www.mountain.rescue.org.uk/how-it-works/. MREW supports 47 independent volunteer mountain rescue teams across England and Wales, providing a wholly voluntary 24/7 service.

[40]RNLI News, "Off-duty RNLI volunteer receives Commendation from Met Police" (21 July 2025), https://rnli.org/news-and-media/2025/july/21/off-duty-rnli-volunteer-receives-commendation-from-met-police. Mr Pusey, a Chiswick volunteer working as a session musician, was off-duty when he heard a pan-pan call on the radio, recovered an unconscious woman from the Thames, and performed CPR until she resumed breathing. He received an OCU Commander's Commendation at the American Embassy on 11 July 2025. The piece is illustrative rather than evidentially central; the doctrinal point is that off-duty intervention by trained civilians does occur and is recognised individually but not provided for systemically.

[41]HC Deb 21 July 2014, vol 584 (Second Reading; Chris Grayling MP), available at https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2014-07-21/debates/14072114000001/SocialActionResponsibilityAndHeroismBill.

[42]HL Deb 4 November 2014, vol 756 (Second Reading), available at https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2014-11-04/debates/14110452000429/SocialActionResponsibilityAndHeroismBill; HL Deb 15 December 2014, vol 758, col 16 (Report stage), where Lord Pannick described the Bill as a "legislative proposal that has been the subject of more sustained ridicule and derision" than any he could remember (cited in HC Deb 2 February 2015, Andy Slaughter MP, Report stage). Lord Pannick's "40 years of studying law" / "fatuous" remarks at Second Reading are widely reported: see e.g. The Compliance People, "Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Act (SARAH)", https://thecompliancepeople.co.uk/updates/news/social-action-responsibility-and-heroism-act-sarah/.

[43]SARAH 2015, ss 2–4.

[44]J Goudkamp (n 2) describes SARAH as a "public relations exercise dressed up as legislation". Searches of Westlaw and BAILII for citations of the Act in the decade following Royal Assent disclose no case in which the Act materially altered the outcome before Hetherington (n 45): see e.g. Hayden v Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust [2016] EWHC 1121 (QB) [54] (Act noted but did not affect analysis).

[45]Hetherington (by his father and litigation friend Hetherington) v Fell & Ferryhill Wheelers Cycling Club [2025] EWHC 1487 (KB) (Ritchie J, 16 June 2025). The case concerned a cyclist seriously injured in a club time trial when a motorist failed to stop at "give way" lines. The Part 20 defendant cycling club, organising the event on a voluntary basis, relied on SARAH 2015 in defending Part 20 contribution proceedings; the court held that the club had discharged its duty of care on conventional risk-assessment grounds, with SARAH operating to reinforce rather than determine that conclusion (see judgment [60]–[62]). Industry commentary describes this as the first occasion on which a defendant has successfully relied on the Act in a civil claim: Weightmans, "Good news for insurers: SARH Act used to defend liability claim", https://www.weightmans.com/media-centre/news/good-news-for-insurers-sarh-act-used-to-defend-liability-claim/; Farrar's Building, "The first reported case on the Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Act 2015", https://www.farrarsbuilding.co.uk/the-first-reported-case-on-the-social-action-responsibility-and-heroism-act-2015/; Law Gazette, "High Court clears cycling club of liability in Part 20 proceedings brought by car driver" (19 June 2025), https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/cycling-club-cleared-of-liability-over-time-trial-crash/5123632.article. The ten-year delay between Royal Assent (February 2015) and first successful reliance (June 2025) is itself doctrinally significant.

[46]For the deliberate choice of "volunteer" rather than "sporting-events organiser" as the comparator class, see O Kirk, "The first reported case on the Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Act 2015" (Farrar's Building, 12 November 2025), https://www.farrarsbuilding.co.uk/the-first-reported-case-on-the-social-action-responsibility-and-heroism-act-2015/, observing that the choice "potentially allow[s] for the imposition of a lower standard of care" and noting the absence of any prior precedent on the construction of SARAH 2015. The five-stage risk-assessment duty is articulated at [65] of the judgment; the standard-of-care formulation at [66]; the SARAH 2015 / Compensation Act 2006 considerations at [60]–[62]; the dispositive dictum on volunteer activity is at [80].

[47]The "grossly negligent" standard tracks the criminal-law test in Adomako (n 18) and provides a workable doctrinal anchor with which English judges are already familiar. It also corresponds in substance to the "good faith" / non-gross-negligence carve-outs typical in Quebec (Civil Code of Quebec art 1471) and in North American Good Samaritan statutes. The threshold is intentionally high: it would not protect reckless conduct but would protect honest errors of judgment by qualified persons acting within their training.

[48]Osman v United Kingdom (1998) 29 EHRR 245. The Grand Chamber held that the state has positive operational obligations under Article 2 in respect of identified threats to life arising from the criminal acts of third parties, where the authorities knew or ought to have known of "a real and immediate risk to the life of an identified individual" (at [116]).

[49]Rabone v Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust [2012] UKSC 2, [2012] 2 AC 72. The Supreme Court unanimously extended the Osman operational obligation to voluntary mental-health patients, expressly rejecting the Court of Appeal's view that the duty was confined to those formally detained under the Mental Health Act 1983: see esp. Lord Dyson at [22]–[34]. The decisive features were the trust's substantive assumption of responsibility for the patient's welfare, the patient's vulnerability, and the trust's knowledge of the real and immediate risk, i.e. capability and knowledge, not formal status, drove the obligation. The structural parallel with the proposed capability-based duty is suggestive rather than determinative: the duty arises from the conjunction of capability + knowledge + foreseeable need, not from any formal relational predicate.

[50]The potential liability of certifying bodies is, in any event, not unique to the proposed reform: bodies certifying competence already face theoretical exposure on theories of negligent certification (cf. Watson v BBBC (n 9) for an analogous regulatory-body case). The reform's gross-negligence immunity applies to the intervener's own conduct; it does not displace whatever duties the certifying body owes in its certifying capacity. A complete treatment of the downstream consequences for certifying bodies lies beyond the scope of this essay.

[51]Compensation Act 2006, s 1, a related provision, equally underused in practice, directing courts to consider whether a step required to meet a standard of care would prevent a "desirable activity" being carried out. Hetherington (n 45) deployed s 1 of the 2006 Act and SARAH 2015 in tandem, and although both Acts reinforced rather than determined the outcome, Hetherington illustrates how a substantive capability-based duty paired with a meaningful immunity could give doctrinal effect to the underlying legislative aim of both statutes.