By Sean Seddon & Sean Dilley
BBC News
The Met Police’s plan to stop attending emergency mental health incidents is “potentially alarming”, a former inspector of constabulary has said.
From September, officers will only attend mental health 999 calls where there is an “immediate threat to life”.
Zoe Billingham, who was previously Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue, said the proposals could create a “vacuum”.
Mental health charity Mind has also expressed concerns over the plan.
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley wrote to health and social care services in Greater London to inform them of the plan last week, the Guardian reported.
The Met argues the move will free up officer resources after a significant rise in the number of mental health incidents being dealt with by its officers in the past five years.
Some police chiefs believe this is down to the service increasingly being seen as the first resort for people in a crisis, as well as a lack of capacity in the NHS and social services to deal with growing mental health demands.
As first reported by the Guardian, the Met says it is looking to “redress the imbalance of responsibility”, which often sees police officers “left delivering health responsibilities”.
But Ms Billingham, who is now chair of the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS mental health trust after 12 years as Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue, warned mental health services are “creaking” and “in some places are so subdued with demand they are not able to meet the requirements of people who need it most”.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, she warned there is “simply no other agency to call” other than the police for people in crisis, adding: “There isn’t another agency to step in and fill the vacuum.”
Image source, PA Media
Sir Mark Rowley envisions the plan will free up police resources
She expressed doubts about the timeframe set by the Met for the change, adding that she would be “very surprised” if mental health trusts across London are able to get extra round-the-clock mental health facilities up and running by 31 August.
Ken Marsh, chairman of the Met Police Federation – which represent officers up to the rank of chief inspector – broadly welcomed the announcement.
But he said officers will still attend “most” calls because they will be concerned about the consequences of not responding.
“At the end of the day, who makes the decision that you can’t go to something and if God forbid this ended up in a coroner’s court, what does my officer then say?”
Ms Billingham agreed a total withdrawal is unlikely in practice, but warned it would be “really, really dangerous” if the Met took that approach.
She authored a 2018 study which looked at the increasing demands mental health crises were putting on police, including:
- Officers being called to detain people under the Mental Health Act – half of which result in them having to transport patients to a medical facility
- Long waits in A&E with someone having a mental health crisis when specialist NHS help can’t be obtained immediately
- Supporting victims of crime with mental health problems – who are estimated by Mind to be three times more likely to become a victim – and carrying out welfare checks
- Attending mental health crises, including where someone is threatening to take their own life, in order to close roads, speak to them, or protect the public
- Looking for missing people, including those in extreme distress or with dementia
In March, Sir Mark Rowley told BBC Newsnight that the staff hours involved in policing mental health is equivalent to dealing with 500,000 victims of domestic abuse.
He pointed to one case where Met officers spent 30 hours supervising one individual having a crisis because they were unable to find a space in a mental health unit.
“This isn’t what [police officers] are trained to do, they’re the wrong people to be doing it, we’re letting vulnerable people down,” he added.
Sarah Hughes, chief executive of Mind, has warned there is not enough capacity in other public services to replace the work police officers currently do.
She told Today she was “not persuaded we’ve got enough in the system to tolerate a shift to this new approach” and said the Met and NHS “urgently need to sit down together and work out a plan in response to these major concerns”.
The charity has also warned that mental health services have been “chronically underfunded for decades”, and called for any changes to be made “carefully and collectively so that no-one is left without support”.
The College of Policing defines a mental health incident as “any police incident thought to relate to someone’s mental health where their vulnerability is at the centre of the incident”.
Police officers are estimated to spend 20-40% of their time dealing with such incidents.
The Met’s new plan has already been adopted by Humberside Police, who introduced the Right Care, Right Person (RCRP) scheme in 2020 to ensure mental health calls are dealt with by mental health professionals.
A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said the RCRP programme was “hugely successful in improving outcomes, reducing demand on all services, and most importantly ensuring that the right care is being delivered by the right person.”
“Police are compassionate and highly skilled but they are not trained to deliver mental health care and spend an average of 10 hours with a patient when they are sectioned under the Mental Health Act.
“In London alone between 500-600 times a month, officers are waiting for this length of time to hand over patients, and it cannot continue,” they added.
The government announced a £150m capital investment in January to improve the places and spaces across the NHS for people experiencing – or at risk of experiencing – a mental health crisis.
It said the funding will allow for the procurement of up to 90 new mental health ambulances, which will take specialist staff directly to patients to deliver support on scene or transfer them to the most appropriate place for care.
If you are affected by any of the issues in this article you can find details of organisations that can help via the BBC Action Line.
