Around the time of VC’s sentencing for manslaughter (on the grounds of diminished responsibility), Dr Sanjoy Kumar – Grace’s father – went on television to talk about their campaign for justice and a public inquiry. During his appearance he said something I’d not known up to that point but which really shocked me:
VC was not assessed in police custody after his arrest for murder x3 and attempted murder x3.
I couldn’t believe my ears because by then, we knew that every contact Nottinghamshire Police had, was not just mental health related, but Mental Health Act related. He had either been arrested and assessed MHA, or arrested then “sectioned” or he’d been encountered after an allegation for which he was not arrested but then “sectioned” or the police had been involved in a 135(1) warrant during which he assaulted an officers.
Every incident was crime and MHA related – so why not ensure assessment after an arrest for the most serious offences of all, in circumstances where it was the case that both the police and the healthcare staff in custody thought he was mentally ill … it made no sense to me and Dr Kumar’s well observed point – bearing in mind he worked as a forensic medical examiner for the Metropolitan Police – is that it meant no contemporaneous assessment of VC’s mental health immediately after arrest for killing his daughter and others.
That became important later, when the argument broke out about whether to accept psychiatric evidence of diminished responsibility or hold a murder trial. If VC was not assessed until five months after the attacks, how relevant was it?
IT STILL DOESN’T MAKE SENSE
At the Nottingham Inquiry today, we heard evidence about all this from a lead Liaison and Diversion practitioner – a mental health nurse. She was giving evidence about assessment issues in custody after VC’s arrest. I will admit to some frustration with whatever structures and cultures brought this lady to the witness stand today however, I want to be hyper-clear while I’m go about the business of attacking them, I’m not attacking her, her evidence or her professionalism.
Nothing which concerns me about her evidence is specific to her as a individual professional – it is about the dysfunctional and wilfully ignorant system in which she works (and in which I previously worked). I don’t doubt for a moment she gets up every day and works very hard to do the best she can and we see glimpses in her evidence of the constraints in operation.
There is a fundamental contradiction in what we heard today that needs arising again.
It’s been aired before, I’ve blogged about this before and it has been at the heart of other criminal investigations leading to homicides where we might have to wonder if they were preventable, but here we go again and my apologies this post is a little longer than normal – I need to quote a lot of the oral evidence we heard today to make my point. Perhaps put the kettle on before continuing?!
I’ve done my best to isolate some answers by the witness which get to the heart of what I’m after here. Those quotations in bold are from counsel to the inquiry, text in italics is either from the L&D witness or it is text from written L&D entries in the custody record which were quoted by counsel:
ORAL EVIDENCE
By 1353hrs on 13th June 2026, an L&D practitioner in police custody had seen VC in the cell. The custody record reads –
“Informed by the police he will only answer to the name ‘Adam’, they reported seen not responding to unseen stimuli while in detention. I’ve spoken with Adam who has refused to engage with our service. Spoken to in cell with two officers present. Sat on bed with relaxed body language and maintained eye contact, would not verbally respond to questions, shook head when offered support asked he understood and responded with a nod.”
Counsel to the Inquiry then asked the witness –
“Do you have any power to continue in circumstances where somebody has declined your services?
“Not in this as an example where somebody appears to understanding what is proposed to them, at least being able to suggest they have an understanding with no overt signs of concerns about his presentation, then no, that individual will be able to make that decision to decline. Our usual practice would be that we close the referral”
“Is that a capacity issue – as in, if she had formed the view he didn’t have capacity, she could have taken it further?”
“If there was information that suggested perhaps he wasn’t as stable as perhaps he presented if there were other signs due to conversation with officers who were observing him or information from the [custody healthcare] staff who had attempted to see him, if there was information that suggested there were concerns about his capacity then yes, that could have been over-ridden and could have been explored.”
So far, this reads as if the professional conclusion was: grounds for calling a statutory Mental Health Act assessment were not met … right?!
Hold that thought! –
There is a further L&D entry at 1725hrs on 13th June.
“They have tried to talk with VC and have asked questions. He has answered “no” to questions asked, but his responses were delayed. Based on history and current presentation, HCPs believe VC is mentally unwell and is not fit to be interviewed. [L&D] advised that usually in these circumstances, she would request a Mental Health Act assessment by calling the CRHT gatekeep and AMHP but she was unclear whether to do this in these circumstances due to the nature of the alleged offence.”
The witness was then contacted and advised –
“The trust stance is he will not be admitted to a psychiatric unit due to the nature of the offence.”
BOOM! – this is really important.
LET’S KEEP GOING
“A conversation related to the nature of VC’s arrest …. the offences for which he was currently in police custody were of huge significant in terms of risk to the public … because of the nature of that, the MHA process that we would have available to us would be, as described, so accessing the Crisis Team and exploring a Mental Health Act assessment. That would only give us access to considerations for sections two or three of the Mental Health Act which are civil sections which given the gravity of the offence and the risk to the public, it would be inappropriate for VC to be admitted to an acute inpatient bed which is what that process would allow.
“The conversation where it discusses the trust stance that he will not be admitted to a psychiatric unit is more actually in relation to … because of the beds that we had available to us as an organisation he would not be suitable for admission there so that’s why we felt at that time the pursuing of a Mental Health Act application was perhaps not appropriate at that point.”
“Did you consider a high-security psychiatric unit if that had been available?”
“That’s not something we would have available to us through the community, to escalate immediately to high-secure in those circumstances as the criminal justice advice form suggests that we would share information with the prison to which he would be remanded and be requesting that they support an assessment of his needs to he could be considered for an admission via the court process to a secure hospital.”
“Do you think you gave any impression that there should not be any assessment of VC’s mental health?”
SO WHICH IS IT?!
Was VC not assessed under the Mental Health Act because his presentation meant it was not clinically justified; OR was the view was taken he needed mental health assessment and care but it was perceived to be accessible only after he had been charged?! He either needs assessment for some kind of care or he doesn’t – if he doesn’t need assessment then the bed or access issues don’t matter.
Both answers were given by the witness and are reinforced by the L&D entries on the custody record – it amounts to the fundamental contradiction I’m highlighting.
It seems obvious: they thought he was mentally ill and unfit for interview but preferred the idea of prosecution for admission to secure care by a more convenient pathway and the trust took this decision without really knowing much about the investigation or even whether it was possible to charge him or possible to charge him yet.
POLICY v LAW
It might well be the policy or the preference of L&D or of Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust that no patient in police custody, able to be detained under s2 or s3 MHA by an AMHP but in need of secure care, can be admitted directly to a high or medium secure care. In fairness, we heard no reference to an AMHP at all so I’m guessing no-one was consulted to consider s13 MHA.
But that’s all it is: NHS policy or preference – it’s not the law and it happens elsewhere, in the real world and it is absolutely vital that NHS managers understand it not only can happen but that sometimes it is the only way to protect the public from serious risk. Not all arrests for serious or complex crime can lead to immediate charges being proffered, as we will see.
The witness kept referring to ‘the charges’ for VC when in fact he had not been charged with anything at the point she was referring to it. He wasn’t charged until the 16th June and it needs pointing out, there can be no legal guarantee that someone can always be charged just because the situation is a serious one. The police were still investigating, much CCTV needed recovering, we know victims were still in situ in the early afternoon of 13th June at places where they were killed and the police had a lot of evidential work still to do.
THINK MORE WIDELY
Even if not in this particular case, there are others in my own professional experience where mentally ill suspects arrested for very serious offences simply cannot be charged, for evidential reasons. Assumptions they can be charged are at the heart of some appalling incidents in this country where even more people have died.
What if, by way of example, Nottinghamshire Police detectives hit the same legal obstacles faced by Devon and Cornwall Police when they were investigating Alexander Lewis-Ranwell?
I will quote this again –
“… because of the beds that we had available to us as an organisation he would not be suitable for admission there so that’s why we felt at that time the pursuing of a Mental Health Act application was perhaps not appropriate at that time.”
[Bold text is my emphasis.]
MYTHS and FOLKLORE
It is not the law of England that patients who require particular NHS services can only be admitted to them if the police charge them with a criminal offence. It might be NHS policy or preference, but it is NOT the law. There are plenty of examples which show this, in fairness and the very best of them – my ‘go to’ example on this point for almost twenty years – actually involves the very mental health trust in this case: Nottinghamshire Healthcare.
In 2002 after the appalling murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, Ian Huntly was eventually arrested and taken to police custody in Cambridgeshire. He was assessed there under the Mental Health Act and guess what? – he was sectioned under s2 MHA and admitted directly from police custody to Rampton high-secure hospital, run by Nottinghamshire! He remained there until he was charged with murder and we know the rest: he was discharged from hospital and sent to prison on remand pending trial.
Other examples include Philip Simelane – he was arrested one Thursday morning for the horrific murder of Christina Edkins in Birmingham and by Friday afternoon, there was a big discussion about whether he should be charged with murder or “sectioned” and regardless of the intricacies of that discussion-decision between the police and NHS, we know he was admitted to a medium-secure mental health unit directly from police custody under s2 MHA and later charged with murder and produced to court.
Let’s keep going to really ram this point home –
In the 2012 MS v United Kingdom case before the European Court of Human Rights, the patient at the centre of it had been detained by the police under s136 MHA – he wasn’t even arrested for a crime! After being taken to police custody as a Place of Safety (which was the only option in that police area at that time), enquiries revealed he had badly assaulted a close relative. She declined to complain about that offence so the CPS declined to charge him with anything because there was no admissible evidence. His relative was much more interested in officers having found him and safeguarded him when he was very ill – he was sectioned from police custody after s136 detention to a medium secure unit under s2 MHA.
WILFUL IGNORANCE
It is not true, it never was true and it will not be true the next time a serious crime occurs that you cannot admit the patient to a secure setting directly from police custody – unless the NHS chooses to block it for non-legal reasons.
That’s just stuff the NHS says which is nothing whatsoever to do with the law of England.
It happened. It happens. It the real world this actually happens!
Other mental health care professionals and other police officers, including me, have been involved in real situations where proper discussion occurs and this conundrum is sorted out, if admission before charge is considered the way to go. Nothing at all prevents the suspect being charged with murder later, as happened with Huntley and Simelane.
Just think about this: Nottinghamshire Healthcare – one of just three high-secure care providers in England / Wales – believes you cannot admit someone to a secure setting from police cells because of the nature of offences for which someone has been merely arrested, but not yet charged despite the fact they have actually done it! They now appear to decline necessary involvement in protecting the public because of the headline arrest reason and without yet knowing anything substantial or detailed from the investigators, who were still in the earliest stages of a major investigation and when victims were still lying in the street and the point the ‘trust stance’ was articulated.
You might ask yourself what could possibly go wrong with attitudes and practices like this in the face of their own organisational experience? – by just assuming the police can or will charge someone because the headline arrest reason indicates something serious. And if you really are wondering what could go wrong, read about ALR and see for yourself.
How dangerous is this very wilful kind of ignorance?! – it amounts to a failure to learn lessons already available to us. I do believe that kind of ignorance is wilful.
NB: this is the latest in post about the terrible events in Nottingham, June 2023. You can find all the others collated on a specific Nottingham resources page along with other materials, inc reports and legal documents.
Awarded the President’s Medal, by
the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
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All opinions expressed are my own – they do not represent the views of any organisation.
(c) Michael Brown, 2026
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
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