A new report has been published by think-tank Onward entitled “Policing in Peril” and it lead to an article in the Sun newspaper which is now bouncing around X (Twitter) claiming the police are spending 800,000-hrs a year “waiting with mental health patients” which is “losing valuable policing time”. Against my instincts and regular reading habits, I had to read the article to find out the source of that claim and it’s the Onward report, published yesterday and given supportive words by former policing minister and shadow Home Secretary, Chris Philp MP.
So I opened the report and found it mercifully short at just 40-pages. I was hoping to find they’d done some decent analysis of whatever problem was within their focus and I wanted to understand why mental health and the “800,000hrs” thing was relevant to that focus. The report is not about mental health in policing specifically, but about “How forces are mired in a crisis of people, purpose and poor technology”. Like so many reports, debates and media coverage before it, the report uses the theme of mental health as its prime example of what is not police work. So as I read this report and became wary quite quickly because that claim about the main focus of the police is politically loaded demonstrable nonsense.
I kept reading things that made me realise there’s potentially much more wrong with it than the 800,000hrs claim which we’ll come to directly and that’s a shame because many of the broad strokes outlined in the foreword by Chris Philp MP (p5) are spot on and I don’t have a difficulty with the title of the report. I just find myself disagreeing with the way mental health has been used as an exemplar, because it over-simplifies a complex issue and that, in a nutshell, is my objection to the RCRP programme which the report describes as “vital”.
MENTAL HEALTH
The police, it turns out –
“worst of all, they have been burdened with responding to mental health calls that detract from their primary responsibility – to tackle crime. Valuable policing time is lost to ushering mental health patients to hospitals, waiting with them in A&E, or checking in on their welfare. Most of these tasks don’t require the police, yet they are often the ones left to fill the gaps. That is why the last Government announced the national roll-out of Right Care, Right Person which shifts mental health work back to the NHS, where there is no criminality and no risk to public safety. It is vital that the new Government ensures that this plan is delivered.”
Chris Philp MP, Shadow Home Secretary.
Now let’s start here before we hit the 800,000 thing. “They have been burdened” is loaded way to describe things. “Valuable policing time is lost …” refers mostly to the practice of the police using section 136 Mental Health Act 1983. This is a legal power that only the police have, only the police can instigate and which is predicated on situations where the RCRP threshold would mostly be met – an immediate risk to life or immediate risk of serious harm. It says “most of these tasks don’t require the police” without offering a single, solitary piece of evidence for that claim (and we know RCRP has not been formally evaluated either by Humberside Police where it began, or in any other force who have adopted it) so what’s the basis for that claim?
The report has three sub-themes –
- a crisis of people;
- a crisis of purpose;
- a crisis of poor technology.
It turns out, mental health is the only thing used in that executive summary (p8-9) to demonstrate the crisis of purpose. It’s worth outlining in full (and then you don’t need to read the report, unless you’re interested in the other two crises) –
“A crisis of purpose: The police’s ability to fulfil its primary goal to tackle crime has become compromised by escalating pressures to respond to mental health cases. Police involvement in mental health calls have surged in recent years. In some forces, the number of requests to deal with mental health calls more than tripled between 2019-21: Suffolk Constabulary saw an increase of 342%, Norfolk 260% and Northamptonshire 90%.
But majority (80%) of policing time spent on mental health calls require no police involvement as they are ‘non-crime no threat’ cases. Section 136 of the Mental Health Act means the police spend a large share of their team simply waiting with mental health patients till they are tended to by a medical professional. Annually, police spend an estimated 800,000 hours waiting with mental health patients – time that could instead address the 400,000 domestic abuse incidents, 1.3 million antisocial behaviour reports, or 500,000 burglaries that police are called to each year.
The last Government rolled out Right Care Right Person (RCRP) to respond to mental health pressures. RCRP aims to reduce the mental health burden by asking officers to signpost mental health callers to the services they need. It has freed up police time in forces that have started to implement RCRP. But there is no fixed timeline for implementation, and forces have been adopting the programme to varying degrees. Local authorities are also yet to receive guidance on how to get involved, all pointing to the fact that much of the mental health caseload that the police deal with persists.”
CRISIS OF PURPOSE
One paragraph at a time, then –
- One – it’s questionable whether the police’s primary goal is “to tackle crime”. It’s an easy, frankly cheap political soundbite and it has obvious mass appeal to public instincts about what the police do. Indeed, many police officers believe this very deeply but it doesn’t survive long with reality. Get busy with some of the research done on policing over the last sixty years, look at caselaw and then at the evening news and you’ll see it’s much less obvious than some would wish. We expect the police to do an awful lot which is nothing whatsoever to do with “tackling crime” whether we mean prevention or commission of it. No doubt at all, there has been a massive escalation in the amount of mental health demand being deflected to the police over the last thirty years and that much of this is inappropriate – this blog has been saying so now for 13yrs so far, but police “mental health cases” can include legitimate incidents which involve risks where there is no crime or victim. Indeed, a cross-section of policing shows mental health written through almost all of it. Taser usage, missing people, arrested suspects and so on and on – all of this involve “core” police work where Chief Constables have legal duties to discharge and which involves those of us affected by our mental health.
- Two – so precisely where Onward get anything to help with the claim that 80% of policing time spent on mental health calls require no police involvement as they are “non-crime, no threat” cases? The cite the Home Office productivity review (2024) and when you read that document and search for the 80% claim, you don’t find it easily outlined. You do find a claim of 800,000 “non-crime, no threat” mental health incidents which each required two officer hours to do, but not something which supports 80% of MH cases being like that and given we’re not sure what Onward are analysing to get their 80% claim on “mental health calls”, it’s even more difficult to take seriously. They touch upon the 800.000hrs claim but don’t say precisely how that’s calculated, citing the HO source which doesn’t explain it either.
- Three – refers to RCRP and takes for granted various claims which have been associated with it. Fails to mention the complete lack of evaluation before it was rolled out, fails to mention the unintended and sometimes adverse consequences of the programme – which includes dubious police contact deaths – and fails to critically engage with it as a solution to whatever we think the problem might be. I don’t think Onward and I agree about what the problem is and there’s certainly no acknowledgement of where the police are under-involved in mental health related demands and most ironically of course, that’s in the domain the crime, the very issue Onward wants to the police to be able to focus on once they deal with all this pesky mental health stuff.
BOX 2
On page 29 of the report, there is a whole box devoted to explaining “the protocol to be followed when a police officer detains a person for mental health reasons”, explaining they mean s136 MHA.
It’s wrong – in several different ways.
Paragraph one – refers to public places and that’s no longer the definition: hasn’t been for coming up to a decade; it refers to detention “in immediate need of care or control” but distinguishes that from not voluntarily accepting help. That’s quite wrong – nothing in law prevents the use of s136 MHA for someone who is apparently willing to be conveyed. I’ve written a blog on that very topic because we know some who are voluntarily conveyed then leave A&E shortly after the police do and they die, so it’s pretty important that officers don’t misunderstand what the report’s authors have misunderstood. It’s literally life and death for some vulnerable people and that might be best avoided for reasons which shouldn’t need explaining.
Paragraph two – makes various errors: the police don’t need to take the person to a “specialist ‘place of safety'”- as the report itself then admits by pointing out people can be taken home. I’m not sure about your home, but mine is not a specialist mental health or “secure” unit for conducting s136 assessments, even if the police did bring me here amidst their concerns. It’s also not true to say the officers must stay – they are absolutely free to leave as long as they realise they carry the liability of subsequent untoward events if they do (and as long as they realise the NHS carry no legal responsibility whatsoever if the police left without agreement). But there may be situations where that is the correct decision and I certainly experienced one when I was a duty inspector making big decisions about which incidents take priority over others. Am I making my officers wait with a sleeping mental health patient or am I telling them to get out of there ASAP and attend the report of a child rape I cannot otherwise immediately resource? – that wasn’t even a difficult decision, let me tell you and I broke no laws by making it.
Paragraph three – this correctly asserts hospitals are “not motivated” to take over detention but incorrectly asserts this is a duty of care they have. No hospital in England or Wales has a legal duty (of care) to take over legal responsibility for those detained and brought in by the police under s136 MHA. Indeed, the NHS doesn’t even have a responsibility to ensure a Place of Safety exists at all – that is clear from case law.
Paragraph four refers to the use of police stations as a Place of Safety and the additional responsibilities on the police. The police, specifically must not check on the person’s welfare every 30-minutes – they must ensure a healthcare professional checks on their health every thirty minutes (quite different) and claim that this results in 800,000hrs of police time spent waiting each year is questionable.
So let’s see why.
800,000 HOURS
The citation in the Onward report for this claim is for the Policing Productivity Review which doesn’t explain where it got it’s 800,000hrs claim from. My best guess from reading both as background for this post, is that 33,000 detentions multiplied by 24hrs for each s136 detention is 792,000hrs of time, or roughly 800,000. I could be wrong, but neither document explains it properly so it seems the most reasonable guess (and why are we having to guess what they saying when it’s them saying it?).
There are problems with this claim, though, especially if the argument is being put that this time or demand mostly avoidable or able (even if only in principle) to be passed to the NHS.
- Firstly, section 136 is a police power – it follows from that, some of the time spent dealing must be for the police to own, regardless of “non crime, no threat” assessment. All guidance around this police power, even including the National Partnership Agreement from June 2023, states the police should be able to leave within an hour.
- So there’s 33,000 to knock off you 800,000hrs – the first hour for each of the s136 detentions.
- Then, the NPA and age-old Royal College of Psychiatry standards on s136 from 2011 (which have never been withdrawn or updated) point out the handover idea is for MH-PoS services, not Emergency Departments.
- In the last Home Office Section 136 Data, 42% of those of us detained were removed to ED, so with zero expectation of handover, the 24hrs spent there (in the way Onward appear to have calculated) is for the police to own, whether rightly or wrong.
- That’s 321,600hrs in total, so once we’ve added that 33,000 for the first hour of all of them, that’s 354,600 so far to be deducted from the 800,000hrs.
- Then, we have the time spent in police stations for those removed to or kept there:
- Only 1% of occasions sees a police station used as a Place of Safety, but that’s 322 x 24hrs to deduct, or another 7,700 totalling 362,000hrs leaving a only 438,000.
But that’s only an estimate, potentially based on the idea of 24hrs per detention. In reality, we know many s136 detentions are resolved faster than 24hrs (further eroding the claim) and some last longer because of the 36hr extension option and the unlawful detentions which often occur when someone needs to be “sectioned” but there’s no bed. And none of this so far touches upon the difficult subject of the s136 detentions which should have been criminal arrests for substantive offences and the unnecessary detentions. Nobody wants to talk about that, in my experience.
OVER-SIMPLIFYING COMPLEXITY
It’s a mess out there, folks with organisational dynamics, assumptions and misunderstanding pushing in all directions at once. It’s certainly too nuanced to see value in reductive mathematics painting an over-simplified picture.
I’ll stop there, although there’s far more which could be said but I’m over my normal word count for a post.
I must admit, I regret the necessity of spending time negating what’s been written but I was left by the end with an impression the authors lacked insight in to the topic, not least because if you want to talk about policing and mental health with any credibility at all, you have to go beyond discussing section 136 of the Mental Health Act which is only a small part of the problem. When you do, you’ll find for all the over-exposure the police service experiences, it is also under-involved in several other aspects (like crime) and which would probably erode the 800,000hrs claim all on its own if the attrition rate for criminal investigations was properly analysed.
Winner of the President’s Medal, the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Winner of the Mind Digital Media Award
All opinions expressed are my own – they do not represent the views of any organisation.
(c) Michael Brown, 2025
I am not a police officer.
I try to keep this blog up to date, but inevitably over time, amendments to the law as well as court rulings and other findings from inquests and complaints processes mean it is difficult to ensure all the articles and pages remain current. Please ensure you check all legal issues in particular and take appropriate professional advice where necessary.
Government legislation website – www.legislation.gov.uk
Mental Health Cop 