FOI 1077-2024/25 Arrests Leading to a MHAA

Request
Q1. The overall number of arrests you made which led to a mental health act assessment (MHAA) taking place in custody, where a decision was taken to admit the arrestee/patient under S2/3 of the Mental Health Act between 2014-2024 (broken down by year),

And, of those overall cases, by year:

Q2. How many of those cases each year involved a subsequent detention in custody which exceeded the statutory maximum period under PACE due to a mental health bed not being found. 

Q3. Of those cases, please can you tell me the longest someone was held in custody past the PACE limit each year as a bed could not be located.

Q4. Your policy as of 2025 regarding MHAAs in custody, and escalation procedures if a bed is not available. If you no longer detain sectioned patients after their PACE clock expires, please also provide your policy on that, and where they are taken instead of custody.

I am specifically not interested in S136, or your policy on that.

Extent of Searches to Locate Information
Following receipt of your request searches were conducted within North Yorkshire Police to locate relevant information. 

Decision
I am not obliged to provide you with a response to your request pursuant to Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act). Please note that when one part of your request falls under Section 12, we are not obliged to review the rest of the questions and the whole request is therefore exempt.

Section 12(1) applies to your request as the cost of complying with your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of identifying and retrieving any relevant information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.

Due to the nature of our recording systems the information requested, if held, is not in an easily retrievable format. Our information retrieval process generally relies on a computer ran report which captures any information recorded upon the surface of a record or within specified fields. Where relevant information is held deeper in the record, or outside of a specified field, a manual assessment is required to retrieve that information.

In order to retrieve the requested information dating back to 2014, it would be necessary to manually review thousands of custody records to determine the number which led to a mental health act assessment (MHAA) taking place in custody, where a decision was taken to admit the arrestee/patient under S2/3 of the Mental Health Act, which would exceed the time limit allowed under the Act. 

Pursuant to Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act this letter acts as a Refusal Notice.

Pursuant to Section 16 of the Act I am required to offer you advice and assistance with regarding to refining your request to within the ‘appropriate limit’ (time/cost limit). A dashboard was introduced in May 2023 which enabled the electronic recording of S136 Mental Health Act detentions in custody. Therefore, we may be able to provide some information in relation to this part of your request if you wish to revise your timeframe accordingly. If you wish to discuss this please do not hesitate to contact me.

Please note that systems used for recording information are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data.  It should be noted therefore that this force’s response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other responses you may receive.