The College of Policing has recently published a “Brief To Officers Attending Coroner’s Court” and it is described as “Information for forces preparing to attend inquests that relate to Right Care, Right Person.”
First published on 30th October 2025, the text of the brief is re-produced in full, below (for security against it disappearing from the internet) – all copyright belongs to the College of Policing and it has been cut / paste unaltered only as an ease-of-reference tool.
WHY BRIEF?
My first instinct was to wonder why the College of Policing feels the need to produce this briefing at all, specific to RCRP – and why now? I’m not aware of other College guidance on preparing for specific kinds of inquests and we know plenty of them are also sensitive matters about complex issues which might well benefit from thorough preparation. Whilst this briefing is specific, very similar things within the document could be said about preparation for any inquest. “Know your policies”, and “know the law”, etc.
But this thing is something “extra” – it seeks to ensure officers know “which role within the force’s control room makes decisions around whether the police attend an incident and have of …” various things. It obviously stresses the importance of “knowing and understanding the force’s RCRP policy” and how it has been applied to the specific incident at the heart of the inquest. All I’ll say there, for now, is people should be wary of thinking force policies do contain the answers – because we already know some of them are legally wrong and / or incomplete or they over-simplify the issues in play. It’s also curious the College is emphasising knowing these things ex post facto.
The ask of, for example, a call handler who may have declined an attendance because an over-simplified flowchart essentially told them to – don’t write in, we know this has happened! – being expected to have knowledge of all the things in the briefing when they were not responsible for most of them is a little weird. How realistic is it to expect a member of staff to “understand local processes and arrangements in place for information sharing” or “to have knowledge of other policies and protocols which may impact decision making”, such as the joint protocols required of all chief constables by the Mental Health Act Code of Practice (in both England and Wales).
Many of those protocols don’t exist and / or weren’t updated for RCRP and / or are out of date in various ways and / or are inadequate in various ways. Again, please don’t write in: I’ve given evidence to this effect in HM Coroners’ courts many times and recent inquests have also found this to be the case. It’s not a controversial or unevidenced point.
AND WHY NOW?
Timing is interesting, though: and we can only speculate about it –
You may remember on the 1st October 2025, an inquest was held in Worcestershire after the death of Christian Parker earlier in the year. I’ve written a post about the sad and lamentable events leading to Christian being found, but the point to be made here is West Mercia Police said one thing in the inquest and said another thing to a Times journalist who covered the proceedings, begging the question about what the hell had gone on. I have a copy of the Record of Inquest which proves this – somebody was either saying things that weren’t true or saying things they had no idea about. I’d prefer to think it was a question of ignorance rather than integrity but I’m ruling out neither.
We also know from recent events (which I won’t specify further, because they are ongoing matters), there have been problems with witnesses admitting they were following flowcharts in a relatively unthinking way which led to questionable decisions. Finally, we know from documentaries like Channel Four’s Dispatches that more and more interest is being given to deaths and what I will described as “near miss” incidents where the kind of decision-making revealed in some inquests was present in various non-fatal incidents. I hate to think how many non-fatal outcomes there have been arising from the poor decision-making we have seen during the inquests we know have happened.
And there is more to come, because we know there are at least eleven deaths which are yet to reach inquest so as scrutiny rises, it’s perhaps inevitable we see the College of Policing reacting to that. I’m somewhat amazed they’ve published it rather than circulating it internally, but there we are.
ADVICE GIVEN
I can’t help but think this is about controlling the narrative around this programme as we have seen increased scrutiny in the national print and television media. I’m also chipping away on this blog and in other ways I’ll come to directly but the programme itself keeps giving me new reasons to question what is actually going on and this brief adds to that –
I was interested, for example, to see the brief’s list of four bullet points, near the top which outlines the four “phases” or aspects of RCRP. When Humberside Police first launched it, they described the four “phases” as follows (referenced in the College of Policing’s “baselining” advice) –
- “Concern for welfare.
- Walk out of healthcare facilities and absent without leave (AWOL) from a mental health establishment.
- Transportation of patients.
- Section 136 of the Mental Health Act and voluntary mental health patients.”
If you click on the RCRP toolkit, however, those four bullet points are phrased slightly differently –
- “Concern for the welfare of a person
- People who have walked out of a healthcare setting
- People who are absent without leave (AWOL) from mental health services
- Medical incidents”
Point 2 from the first version is now split in to two areas of business, conveyance now goes completely unmentioned and “medical incidents” is so wide a topic as to mean it could apply to almost anything with a health question at the centre of it.
The new brief however, changes it again –
- “Concern for the welfare of a person
- People who have walked out of a healthcare setting
- People who are absent without leave (AWOL) from mental health services
- Medical incidents, including conveyance”
So conveyance is now covered again, albeit now tagged on to the medical incidents rather than be a phase of its own and the two versions of the original phase 2 remain split.
All very different, isn’t it?
WHAT’S GOING ON
So what is Right Care, Right Person actually about?! –
When you bear in mind individual police forces have liberty to exercise discretion over how they do this, it becomes more confusing. We know for a fact some forces have altered the four phases as Humberside originally conceived them. One of them included s135 in phase four, as well as s136 – that was prior to the College scrapping reference to Part X of the MHA completely and going with “medical incidents”, whatever that means.
It’s conceptually chaotic – and that’s without need to revisit why RCRP’s architects chose these four sub-areas of policing and mental health, whilst ignoring the other 5/6; and without re-visiting the often stated claim that RCRP is not about demand reduction – which is hard to argue when we remember how it began with claims of “one million hours of police time saved“.
The brief reminds us of the police’s determination to respond to article 2 and article 3 risks, but that does just beg the question why the inquests for which the brief is intended to prepare people has repeatedly highlighted this doesn’t happen. And whilst accepting again this briefing includes ex post facto considerations, it’s noteworthy it doesn’t remind officers or staff ensure they know the lynchpin to the whole thing:
What is an immediate risk to life?
MY ONGOING RESEARCH
This might be the apposite point to explain a development in my PhD research which I formally began the start of this year. I went to university only yesterday for a meeting with my two supervisors and they put a challenge to me after a discussion about where I am with things: instead of researching mental health police contact deaths more widely, why not focus on Right Care, Right Person specifically?
They quite rightly pointed out something I hadn’t really seen for myself – a “woods for the trees” type of thing. I’m spending much of my time focussing on RCRP and the inquests which are happening (and forthcoming), the cases are expanding in number, information from them has been made public with obvious potential for other cases to conclude before the point where I have to stop looking for new examples as part of my research.
Why not make the PhD real-world relevant by focussing on a live policy-practice issue that in any event raises all the issues to be gleaned from the wider survey?
So I have a lot to think about, but my instinctive reaction was that I couldn’t fathom a single reason not to take that nudge and run with it.
THE COLLEGE BRIEFING
This is the text from the College of Policing’s “Brief“, as downloaded on the 18th November 2025 –
Right Care Right Person (RCRP) is a national initiative that has been adopted by policing and partners under the National Partnership Agreement: Right Care, Right Person (RCRP) (opens an external website in the same tab). It aims to ensure that vulnerable people get the right support from the right services.
The RCRP toolkit provides implementation guidance to forces, along with examples of RCRP in action through ‘Smarter Practice’, Right Care Right Person – Humberside Police. It applies to calls for service about:
- concern for the welfare of a person
- people who have walked out of a healthcare setting
- people who are absent without leave (AWOL) from mental health services
- medical incidents, including conveyance
This information offers guidance to forces that are preparing to attend inquests that may relate, directly or indirectly, to RCRP. You can use the following information when responding to inquests to ensure consistency in the information provided.
The focus of RCRP is to ensure vulnerable people receive care from the most appropriate agency. Often, this will not be the police. A legitimate consequence of RCRP is that it reduces demand on the police in responding to non-police-related incidents. This means police can:
- respond to the most vulnerable victims
- concentrate on the core roles of policing
There are no targets to reduce police demand aligned to RCRP. The audit and evaluation process for RCRP assesses the quality of decision making, not the outcome of the call.
RCRP is based on the legal position that the police have a responsibility to take all reasonable measures to assist where there is either:
- a real and immediate risk to life (European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) Article 2)
- a real and immediate risk of that person being subject to serious harm or other inhumane treatment (ECHR Article 3)
Where the legal thresholds are met, the police are under a duty to respond to incidents, and in addition, to respond to incidents involving crime.
ECHR articles 2 and 3 are an obligation on the state and apply not only to the police, but also to other agencies.
PREPARING FOR ATTENDANCE
AT AN INQUEST
When preparing to attend an inquest relating to RCRP, forces should consider the following.
- Continuity of attendance by identifying a specific role holder within force who responds to, and attends, all coroner’s inquests relating to RCRP. If this person is unable to attend, the person attending should be well briefed.
- Legal oversight and liaison with a force legal advisor upon a coroner’s request for statement and policy disclosure.
- Ensure any memorandums of understanding, service level agreements, and escalation policies that are in place regarding RCRP are readily available to the person attending the inquest.
- Ensure statements and responses are only provided where this has been specifically requested by the coroner.
- Notify the College of Policing when a Reg 28 Prevention of Future Deaths (PFD) notice is received to ensure national oversight of any learning takes place.
- Liaise with the College when sent a Reg 28 PFD notice that has also been sent to the national Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and/or the College, prior to submitting a response to ensure the facts of the case and recommendations are fully understood.
- Understand ‘powers of entry’ as this frequently arises in inquests. It’s important to set out that it is not the responsibility of the police to force entry to a private premises purely on the basis that other agencies cannot gain entry. In the absence of a requirement to save life or limb, agencies should have agreements in place at a local level that may include options to work with the Fire and Rescue service and/or other services.
ATTENDING AN INQUEST
If you are attending an inquest that may relate to RCRP, it is important to consider the following.
- Liaising with the force’s RCRP lead/subject matter expert prior to responding or attending the inquest and seeks support with preparation.
- Knowing and understanding the force’s RCRP policy and how it has been applied to the specific incident the inquest relates to, as well as how RCRP applies more broadly within the force.
- Knowing which role within the force control room makes decisions around whether the police attend an incident and have knowledge of:
- force control room tools or mechanisms that are in place to aid decision making (for example, flowcharts, policies, floor walkers and training)
- other policies and protocols which may impact decision making, for example, missing persons incidents and incidents relating to children
- Having an awareness of the National Partnership Agreement: Right Care, Right Person (RCRP) (opens an external website in the same tab) and College’s RCRP toolkit. These can be referenced in any explanation of RCRP that relates to the partnership approach agreed by the force.
- Knowledge of any signposting agreements, protocols or processes, in which the force refers calls to other agencies and of the method used to do so.
- Understanding the local processes and arrangements in place for information sharing with partners regarding safeguarding reporting (for example, vulnerable adult and child information sharing with the local authority).
- Preparing for questions about other agencies. You do not have to answer on behalf of other agencies, however you should be prepared. Answer in relation to the joint approach with partners, rather than questions about the policies and protocols of partner agencies.
- Knowing and understanding the duties arising from ECHR Articles 2 and 3, and section 17 PACE (opens an external website in the same tab) (powers of entry). It is likely that questions will arise that relate to what defines an immediate risk to life and when the threshold is met.
- Understanding the importance of the case law arising from Syed v DPP (opens an external website in the same tab) (Court of Appeal, 2010, EWHC 81 (Admin)) in relation to the powers of entry available to the police under S17(1)(e) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (opens an external website in the same tab), where it was held that ‘concern for welfare is not sufficient to justify an entry’ under this power.
- Preparing for hypothetical questions. Coroner’s may ask the “what if” question. It is important to only provide a response when you know the answer based on your force policies. You may also be asked questions that you do not know the answer to. It is important to say that you do not know and consider signposting to another colleague that is present who may know the answer.
Awarded the President’s Medal, by
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 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
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