Home Secretary vows to invest in mental health resources to ‘free up’ police time

27 February 2023

Nottinghamshire Police Federation has welcomed plans to relieve the burden on officers of dealing with mental health cases and vulnerable people.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman has written to the Chief Constable and Police and Crime Commissioner to set out how £150 million of capital investment will be used to improve the mental health crisis care response. 

The funding, which is for England and Wales, includes £7 million for specialised mental health ambulances, with the remainder for new or improved mental health crisis response infrastructure, including safe spaces.

Ms Braverman said: “The Prime Minister recently set out that one of his crime priorities is to reduce burdens on the police from non-police activity. We want to see more police officers on the beat, investigating and preventing crime.

“Mental health demand pressures on many forces are taking officer time away from fighting crime. People in mental health crisis need to be seen by healthcare professionals to get the appropriate assessment or treatment in the right environment.”

The College of Policing and National Police Chiefs’ Council are working on a smarter working practice that is based on Humberside’s application of the Right Care, Right Person model, which they are on track to deliver by the end of March.

They are also working on a toolkit to assist forces.

Simon Riley, chair of Nottinghamshire Police Federation, responded: “The plan outlined by the Home Secretary is welcome and long overdue. These days if a member of the public is experiencing a mental health crisis, the chances are that it won’t be a mental health specialist, ambulance or social services that respond to that call for help, it will be the police service.

“Our colleagues will always step up when the public needs us, but mental health support is best done by trained specialists, and the hours of police time this consumes is time we cannot spend investigating crime or locking up offenders.

“I am hopeful that the resources being provided by the Home Office will result in positive changes and allow us to get back to the core job of policing that the public in Nottinghamshire needs us to do.”

The Home Secretary’s letter has promised “swift access” for police to refer individuals into professional mental health care.

She added: “It is important that once the [multi agency] National Partnership Agreement is finalised and the Right Care, Right Person model is adopted, that a monitoring and evaluation framework is in place.”