Cheshire Police to cut back on attending mental health calls

The national scheme aims to free up officers so they can go about other policing duties

Cheshire Police will reduce the number of mental health-related incidents they respond to in a phased scheme over the next two years.

The national "right care, right person" scheme involves officers only attending mental health calls where there is a risk to life or of serious harm.

It aims to free up officers so they can go about other policing duties.

Call handlers will gather information to make effective decisions about threat, harm, risk and vulnerability.

At a meeting, Evan Morris, chairman of the Cheshire Police and Crime Panel, urged caution and warned against introducing the scheme as quickly as the Metropolitan Police, which implemented the scheme this month.

Mr Morris asked police commissioner John Dwyer: "Should any changes be introduced, could the commissioner explain how a 999 emergency call handler or police officer on the streets in Cheshire will triage such incidents in order to make a safe assessment to determine the most appropriate timely intervention or response?"

The Local Democracy Reporting Service said Mr Dwyer told the panel meeting: "I think the Metropolitan Police said they're going to start it straightaway.

"In Cheshire there are existing partnership working arrangements with other agencies and the right care, right person approach is being implemented in three phases, ending in the summer of 2025, so this is a gradual drift into the full package.

"This is an approach already used by call handlers in relation to other reports to the police and it's an extension of the existing approach to decision-making and risk management."

He said police officers spend a lot of time dealing with calls related to mental health issues, and, unless the person has committed a crime, they are not police matters at all.

He insisted the scheme would be adopted in a measured way.

"It has to be a staged development because, clearly, they've not got the resources because they've not been doing it.

"So that's why we're prepared to spend the next two years moving into the full model."

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