Over a year ago, in January 2024, four bodies were discovered in a home in Costessey, Norfolk and led to a number of immediate and ongoing consequences connected to the Right Care, Right Person programme which was due to go live in that police force area a week or so after the tragedy.
In summary, a man called Norfolk Police on 999 around 6am asking for help because of his mental health, stating he was confused and the police declined to attend, referring him to the NHS 111 service. An hour or so later, just after 7am, a member of the public rang 999 in connection with the same address and when officers forced entry, they discovered four bodies. The working assumption from what has been made known so far is the man who rang 999 killed the three others before killing himself – a Coroner has opened inquests in to all four deaths and we do not yet know what fully happened.
But we learned something key, today (April 2025) –
A pre-inquest hearing has heard the call handler who answered 999 is now facing a Misconduct Meeting after the investigation heard the man had stated he “had a knife and had lost the plot”. It was further revealed he had been trained in the requirements of the “Right Care, Right Person” programme which was due to go live. As a consequence of Costessey, the implementation of that programme was paused, Norfolk Police issuing a press release (now withdrawn from the internet but which I downloaded at the time) and it said —
“The force is fully prepared and ready to go live, the incident has generated some commentary and concern and the constabulary has made the decision to postpone the roll-out … RCRP has always been about getting people in crisis the right care, from the right professional … we are acutely aware of the commentary and concerns the incident in Costessey has generated, which is why we took time to review the position.
Given some of the concerns, it is only right we postpone the roll-out to allow for as short period of consolidation to give us extra time to provide additional information and reassurance to the public and the wider health and social care system. RCRP is not a fundamental withdrawal from policing certain calls for service; policing will always have a role where a danger, risk of harm or crime is identified.”
INITIAL REACTION
I have kept an eye on the fallout from the incident since it happened. I discussed it at the time with several people saying that I suspected the call handler would have been trained in RCRP because it was imminently due to go live and that what becomes really important
The reaction from the force is a touch weird: the part about emphasising the programme had not yet gone live doesn’t appear to be necessary now we know the incident involved a mentally ill man saying he had a knife and had “lost the plot”. That could amount to all manner of different kinds of situation and I doubt you’d know which they are unless you turn up to find out – and who is going to turn up if the mention is the man had a knife? I’m now just contemplating the idea the police declined to attend and that in some version of what followed we end up with paramedics going in to a situation where we now know a man had homicidal and suicidal ideation.
This “not yet live” thing is an aspect of RCRP I’ve not blogged about so far but have always found odd – we know charities like Mind and Rethink have stated they believe many forces are doing a “soft launch”, which means pressing on with the RCRP ideas without formally saying so and everything I know about this programme is that is true. In fact, it’s wider than that: RCRP touches upon four areas of policing & mental health, yet we know the principles are being more widely applied to areas which no-one said were in scope, like attendances to distrubances on mental health wards and supporting MHA assessments in the community.
IT DOESN’T CHANGE THE LAW
RCRP purports to correct conditions which lead to inappropriate, unnecessary deployment of the police. Many of us were declining to attend welfare checks a decade before RCRP starting rolling out country wide and I’ve written about that on this blog (date stamped). Where RCRP has sought to give a date to partner organisations where change would occur, implies the belief of senior officers that forces always doing these things and should just continue until others are “ready”, whatever that means. In reality, many of us were not just doing these things – we were applying professional judgement, based on the law to attend only where appropriate.
Of course, pre-RCRP and post-RCRP, the emphasis needs to be on getting the deployment decision correct and the argument by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) is presumably the word ‘knife’ changes this incident from one where it may reasonably be bounced towards the health service to one where officers should have attended? We’ll have to wait for the hearing to see if that’s true or whether any other factors influence it.
On another day, we could do with disentangling the bold text, at the end of the quote, above which was my added emphasis because any reading of the National Partnership Agreement for RCRP shows the sentence can’t be correct. No police force implementing RCRP has committed to attend where there is any degree of “danger or risk of harm” and we know the police often characterise actions which could be considered criminal as “mental health issues” when it suits them to say so. The “threshold” for RCRP is predicated on Article 2 and Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights and those are very high bars indeed. There is a lot of harm and risk which gets nowhere near triggering them.
We might wonder if we’re being gaslighted or whether the ACC who said this is just being too casual in his use of words?
REVIEWS & INVESTIGATIONS
In addition to pausing the rollout, there were other implications to the incident which subject to process including the suspension and investigation of the staff member we now know will face a disciplinary hearing. We also know the (then) Police and Crime Commissioner for Norfolk wrote to His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, requesting a review of force control room operations and the College of Policing was asked to review the force’s implementation plans for RCRP.
Last year, HMIC published a letter in response to the PCC’s request for a review of the force control room and the Chief Constable issued a response to that. You can decide for yourself what to think about it, given the Chief Constable is emphasising that most seems well and the BBC headlining with “force told to improve call handling [for vulnerable people]”. In May 2024, the force announced RCRP will now commence in Norfolk on Wednesday 29th May, local campaigners stating they were not consulted about this and that they remained concerned.
So that’s where we are:
We know there is a domestic homicide review ongoing, we know there are separate inquests pending initially for the victims in June 2025 and for the perpetrator on a date to be fixed.
Both press releases outlined in full –
CHIEF CONSTABLE’S RESPONSE to HMIC 240524
Norfolk’s Chief Constable has responded to the findings of an independent review of the force’s contact and control room by the police inspectorate.
In January, at the request of the Chief Constable, the then Police and Crime Commissioner Giles Orpen-Smellie commissioned His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Service (HMICFRS) to inspect the force’s control room, focusing on how 999 calls are handled and responded to.
The report from HMICFRS has been published today (Friday 24 May 2024) finding that overall, the force provides a high level of service to the public.
In conclusion, the report states control room personnel “displayed high levels of professionalism in their dealings with the public” and that the force performs well in most functions in the control room.
The report identified areas where the force’s response to vulnerability can be improved, something which the constabulary is already addressing through the implementation of the Right Care Right Person initiative, which launches next week.
Responding to the report, Chief Constable Paul Sanford said: “I welcome this report and it is pleasing to see that overall, inspectors found we provide a high level of service to the public, often in demanding circumstances. The inspectorate found calls were answered well; our staff are polite, professional, and acted appropriately in 99.3% of the calls audited for the report.
“We accept the findings around inconsistencies in how information is recorded for calls relating to vulnerable people and that this doesn’t always happen.
“We have already taken steps to address this through our work to implement the Right Care Right Person (RCRP) initiative, which has seen changes to our systems in the control room, which means call handlers will have to record details for such calls in the future.
“As announced earlier this week, we are launching the RCRP initiative Wednesday (29 May). The findings from this report provide further evidence that this is the right thing to do and that the public will receive an improved service, which also goes some way to address issues identified in this report.”
Last year the room dealt with more than 450,000 calls for service including emergency and non-emergency calls, reports via our website, live chat service and emails.
Mr Sanford added: “Control room staff work in a demanding and dynamic environment and this is evidenced in the report in reference to a call handler who maintained contact with a suicidal missing person for thirty minutes; providing reassurance and support and preventing them from taking their own life.
“The demand we deal with is vast and we maintain one of the fastest average answer times in the country for emergency calls, answering 90% of 999 calls in 10 seconds.
“We have already taken action to address the issues identified in this report and I hope this provides a degree of reassurance to the public about our call handling processes.”
The review was commissioned following the deaths of four people at a house in Costessey in January after a 999 call, made an hour before police attended, was not responded to. The constabulary referred itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct which continues to independently investigate the circumstances of the 999 call and previous contact with the family.
RCRP PRESS RELEASE – 220524
Norfolk Police, working with health and social care organisations, will launch the Right Care Right Person initiative next week to better target help and welfare support for people in Norfolk from the right agency.
Right Care Right Person (RCRP) will start in Norfolk on Wednesday 29 May 2024.
RCRP is a new approach in Norfolk but has already been running successfully in a number of other forces and is set to be rolled out across all forces in the UK.
Developed by Humberside Police, RCRP is supported by partnership work between police forces, health providers and the Government, and is recognised by the College of Policing and National Police Chiefs’ Council as good practice.
The aim is for the right agency and appropriate professionals to deal with health-related calls rather than police being the default first responder.
In 2023, Norfolk Constabulary received 22,959 welfare calls (12% of overall demand), with officers attending 12,638 of those calls (55%). These calls would include medical health, mental health and social care related issues.
A review by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) recently found police officers nationally are spending just under one million hours sat with mental health patients in hospitals waiting for assessment.
The force remains committed to protecting the most vulnerable and will continue to attend incidents where there is a risk to life or serious harm. Where reports do not meet the threshold for police intervention, callers will be signposted to the most appropriate agency.
In February 2024, the constabulary confirmed it had paused the planned launch of the RCRP initiative after the deaths of four people in Costessey in January 2024.
Following this incident, and at the request of Norfolk’s Chief Constable Paul Sanford, Giles Orpen-Smellie – Norfolk’s then Police and Crime Commissioner – commissioned His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) to inspect the force’s control room, focusing on how 999 calls are handled and responded to.
The constabulary also asked the College of Policing to review its RCRP implementation plans, including its training to officers and staff.
Following the initial debrief by HMICFRS and the peer review report by the College of Policing, the constabulary is now launching RCRP.
Assistant Chief Constable Nick Davison, who has been overseeing the implementation of RCRP, said: “This initiative has always been about getting people in crisis the right care, from the right professional.
“While we believed it was right to introduce RCRP and were fully prepared to go live in February, we postponed the roll-out to give us extra time to provide additional information and reassurance to the public and our partners, to address the concerns and commentary brought about by the tragic events in Costessey.
“The inspection by HMICFRS and the peer review by the College of Policing has given us that additional reassurance.”
Tracey Bleakley, Chief Executive Officer, NHS Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care Board (ICB), said: “All partners are committed to working collaboratively and carefully together to implement the Right Care, Right Person model.
“We have taken steps to tailor the model for Norfolk and are working together with our partners in health and social care, so we can make the necessary changes to service provision and ensure vulnerable people are given appropriate care by the appropriate agency. We have also been collaborating with local experts by experience as part of this work and will continue to monitor the implementation across Norfolk.”
Further information about the RCRP initiative is available from the following link:
National Partnership Agreement: Right Care, Right Person – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
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 