Place of safety orders
Our interest in these figures
Under section 297 of the 2003 Act, a police officer can take a person from a public place to a place of safety in order to arrange a medical examination. The person must appear to have a mental disorder and can be detained in the place of safety for up to 24 hours. The law is clear that a place of safety should be a hospital or other care establishment. Police stations should only be used in exceptional circumstances. We want to report on how often this power is used and to what extent police stations are used as places of safety.
What we found
Not all police forces have reported place of safety orders to us. We believe that there are many orders that we do not hear about. We remind the police that they have a statutory duty to inform us when a person is removed to a place of safety. Of the 192 orders notified to us, only seven involved removing the person to a police station. We would prefer if this figure was lower still and preferably zero. Local psychiatric emergency plans should identify appropriate places of safety for individuals.
Annual reports
- directors introduction
- overview of the Mental Health (Care & Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003 introduction
- new orders granted in 2008-09
- total numbers of 2003 Act orders in existence
- monitoring our priority areas
- additional findings from our monitoring of mental health law
- our overview of the use of the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000