Metropolitan Police: concern sector 'not ready' as force prepares to stop attending mental health incidents

Mental health advocates fear a new plan for the Met Police to stop responding to 999 calls relating to mental health incidents will create a "vacuum" for distressed, vulnerable Londoners - with the sector not ready to cope without their support.

Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has written to health and social care services to say police will no longer attend mental health callouts after 31 August, unless there is a threat to life. The move, first reported by The Guardian, was designed to free up officers to spend more time on fighting crime, rather than dealing with patients in need of medical help from experts. .

Rowley’s letter to health and social care services was sent on 24 May, giving them a 99-day deadline to prepare, The Guardian reports. In it, Rowley said: “I appreciate this may be challenging, but for the reasons I have set out above, the status quo is untenable.”

He set out those reasons in a section on the impact on London, where he wrote: “Every day that we permit the status quo to remain we are collectively failing patients and are not setting officers up to succeed.

“In fact, we are failing Londoners twice," he said. “We are failing them first by sending police officers, not medical professionals, to those in mental health crisis, and expecting them to do their best in circumstances where they are not the right people to be dealing with the patient."

Rowley continued: “We are failing Londoners a second time by taking large amounts of officer time away from preventing and solving crime, as well as dealing properly with victims, in order to fill gaps for others.”

The news has sparked concern from some mental health advocates about what it could mean for vulnerable patients, as well as from within the Met Police as to whether it will be practical for officers on the ground.

Ken Marsh, head of the Metropolitan Police Federation representing officers from the rank of constable to chief inspector, praised Rowley for trying to tackle the issue, but said that many calls will likely still be attended to.

“I think what the commissioner is trying to get across and I hope this is the point, we spend far too much time just babysitting basically with individuals that we bring in to a place of safety,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

But he said: “It’s not for the commissioner to say whether my colleagues can or can’t attend, because they will make a dynamic assessment. They could well be stopped on the streets and have to deal with it there and then.

“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?" he queried. "‘Well the commissioner told me not to go’ and that just wouldn’t stand up because you are solely responsible for what you’re dealing with out on the streets.”

Sarah Hughes, chief executive of mental health charity Mind, also told the BBC she was not convinced that the system was ready for such a change, or to support so many vulnerable patients alone.

“I am not persuaded we have got enough in the system to tolerate a shift to this new approach. I think we’ve got a huge way to go before the system is working together on behalf of very distressed individuals,” she said.

Ms Hughes said the mental health sector was "not ready" nor "in a fit for purpose state", to enact the new policy at this point. “I think that the Metropolitan Police and the NHS urgently need to sit down together to work out a plan in response to these major concerns.”

Former Inspector of Constabulary Zoe Billingham - now the chairwoman of NHS mental health services in Norfolk and Suffolk - also expressed deep concern, telling BBC it could be "really, really dangerous if the police were just to unilaterally withdraw from attending mental health crisis calls right now".

She said: “I don’t think that that’s what’s on the table, but we need to be careful how this plays out to members of the public because of course come the end of August, if your loved one is in mental-health crisis, there’s going to be a terrible quandary, because you’re going to be worried about calling 999 but on the other hand, they will be simply no one else that you can call, because the infrastructure won’t be in place.”

Ms Billingham said if the Met were to suddenly step back from responding to such calls, it would simply create a “vacuum”.