The reasonable competence standard is the yardstick against which the courts measure a professional's conduct in a negligence claim. It runs through every field in which a person holds themselves out as having a particular skill — solicitors, accountants, surveyors, engineers, architects, independent financial advisers, IT consultants and beyond. The standard is not perfection, nor the counsel of the leading textbook. It is the ordinary skill of an ordinary competent practitioner exercising the art in question, judged as at the time the work was done.
The starting point is Bolam v Friern Hospital Management Committee [1957] 1 WLR 583. McNair J directed the jury that a professional person is not guilty of negligence if they have acted in accordance with a practice accepted as proper by a responsible body of skilled opinion in that field. Although Bolam arose in a medical context, the courts have applied the formulation to professional services generally. The test asks whether the practitioner exercised the ordinary skill of an ordinary competent person exercising that particular art. It does not require the highest expert skill; it requires competence.
In Bolitho v City & Hackney Health Authority [1998] AC 232 the House of Lords qualified Bolam. A body of professional opinion that supports the defendant will not shelter them if the court concludes that the opinion is not capable of withstanding logical analysis. The judge is entitled to ask whether the experts have directed their minds to the comparative risks and benefits and reached a defensible conclusion. The check is used sparingly, but it exists — a professional cannot escape liability simply by pointing to another practitioner who would have done the same thing without a rational basis for having done so.
Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board [2015] UKSC 11 modified the standard where advice on risk and choice is concerned. The Supreme Court held that a professional must take reasonable care to ensure that the client is aware of any material risks involved in a recommended course, and of any reasonable alternatives. Materiality is judged from the perspective of a reasonable person in the client's position, not the profession alone. Although Montgomery arose in medicine, its logic — that the client's autonomy is the starting point for informed choice — has been picked up in claims against solicitors, financial advisers and other advisers whose recommendations carry risk.
Section 13 of the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 implies into every contract for the supply of a service in the course of a business a term that the supplier will carry out the service with reasonable care and skill. The common-law standard and the statutory term run in parallel; a client bringing a claim will usually plead both. The section is the reason that a written engagement letter cannot contract out of ordinary competence without express, reasonable and clearly signalled terms.
The claimant carries the burden of proving negligence on the balance of probabilities. In practice this is done through expert evidence. An independent expert in the same field explains the prevailing standard of practice at the relevant time and offers a view on whether the defendant's conduct fell below it. The judge is not bound by the expert's opinion but will rarely find negligence in the teeth of unanimous expert support for the defendant, unless the Bolitho check bites.
A practitioner who holds themselves out as a specialist is judged by the standard of a competent specialist in that discipline, not by the general standard of the wider profession. Conversely, the courts have rejected any junior-practitioner exception. In Wilsher v Essex Area Health Authority [1988] AC 1074 the Court of Appeal (approved on this point in the House of Lords) held that the standard is set by the post, not by the person filling it. A newly qualified professional discharging the duties of the role owes the same standard as a competent practitioner in that role.
The standard is measured at the date of the act or omission, not by later developments. A practitioner is not negligent for having followed the accepted practice of their time simply because a later refinement has since made that practice look inadequate. Records of the guidance, codes and market practice current at the time of the work are, for that reason, some of the most important evidence in a negligence claim.
A consulting engineer advises on the structural design of a mezzanine floor in 2018. In 2022 the design proves inadequate and the client suffers loss. In the negligence claim, the court considers what an ordinary competent structural engineer in 2018 would have done — not what a 2022 engineer, with the benefit of intervening research, would have done. An expert witness explains the prevailing calculation methods and design codes in force in 2018. If the engineer's approach met that standard, there is no negligence. If it fell below it, the defendant may seek to rely on a responsible body of engineering opinion that would have taken the same approach — at which point the Bolitho logical-analysis check applies. If that body of opinion cannot be defended in logic, the defence fails.
The reasonable competence standard is what a professional indemnity policy responds to. Apex places PI cover for professions including solicitors, accountants, engineers and surveyors, and the trigger for indemnity in each is essentially the same — a claim, or circumstance likely to give rise to a claim, that the insured has fallen below the standard of a reasonably competent practitioner in that field. Understanding the standard is the first step in understanding the cover.
Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Firm reference number 724952. This entry is general information, not advice on any particular policy.