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Police force to bill NHS for time officers spend on mental health calls

Police officers
Police officers

A police force is to become the first in Britain to charge the NHS for the time that officers spend on “unnecessary” mental health call-outs rather than solving crimes.

Bedfordshire’s policing chief has calculated officers are spending at least 53,000 hours a year dealing with people with mental ill health - equivalent to losing 23 full-time police constables from fighting crime.

Festus Akinbusoye, police and crime commissioner, has told his force to draw up a detailed breakdown of the costs and officers’ time in order to bill the NHS quarterly for the “unsustainable” costs.

“We can’t have police officers spending seven hours in A&E. It’s not just about money. It’s about the resources taken from the frontline doing proper policing jobs,” said Mr Akinbusoye, the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners’ (APCC) prevention lead.

His move comes as forces are withdrawing from acting as “de-facto” ambulances for people suffering mental ill health so they can re-focus on tackling crime.

Festus Akinbusoye, Bedfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner - Facebook
Festus Akinbusoye, Bedfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner - Facebook

Police chiefs plan to slash the number of mental health call-outs they attend by as many as half as they come under pressure from the Government to get “back to the basics” of solving crime.

In London, only 22 per cent of calls that the Metropolitan Police receive are about crime with some frontline units losing half of their officers to health call outs where they have to sit out their shift in A&E tending a mental health patient.

Chris Noble, chief constable for Staffordshire Police, said his officers could no longer spend “more time in A&E” than they do dealing with domestic abuse victims.

“In terms of us becoming de-facto ambulances and transporting people and spending more time in A&Es than we do in the home of a domestic abuse victim - I’m just not going to do that anymore,” he said.

“We’ll give people proper notice, we’ll think about how we can build in those checks and balances and train our staff appropriately.

“But if, quite rightly, I’m going to be held to account around crime, disorder and supporting vulnerable people who are victims of crime and harm we cannot be doing what we are currently doing. It’s not going to be a cliff edge but something different needs to happen.”

Humberside Police negotiates agreement

Humberside Police, Britain’s highest-rated police force, has negotiated an agreement with healthcare agencies so that police officers are quickly replaced by health specialists if they are the first on the scene.

“What this has meant is that more than 1,000 officer hours per month have been reallocated to enable us to focus on what communities want us to be doing, that being proactive policing,” said Chief Constable Lee Freeman.

Humberside arrests more suspects per police officer than any other force and has the highest detection rate for overall crime in England and Wales. The force has been rated outstanding by the HM police inspectorate.

Similar schemes to reduce the time spent tending to mental health incidents are being adopted by the Metropolitan Police, Lincolnshire, Hampshire and North Yorkshire.

Mr Akinbusoye said the current situation - where mental health call-outs can take up a fifth to a third of police time - was unsustainable. He said that once he had the audit of costs “I will send it to the necessary health trusts”.

“I will say: ‘this is how much you have cost me. Do you want us to find a way of resolving this or do you want to pay this bill to the force? It is not sustainable.”