Mental Health - 350/20

Date Responded 23 March 2020

Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')

As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of access to information held at the time of a request, by a Public Authority (including the Police), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.

You asked:

For each of the last 5 calendar years - 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019.

how many calls has your police force received where "mental health" was flagged and/or cited as a factor
how many times in the last five calendar years has section 136 of the Mental Health Act been used to detain a member of the public?
Please provide an estimate of money spent dealing with mental health-related calls and cases

In Response:

Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with both the Finance and Corporate Development departments of Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held, in part, by Northumbria Police.

I am able to disclose the located information to you as follows, however the following should be noted and considered when reviewing the information:

In April 2019, the method the force used to define mental health related incidents was altered. Prior to this date, such incidents may have been under-reported. This should explain the notable increase in such incidents in 2019.

Bearing the above in mind, please see the following:

Year	Calls
2015	7,615
2016	7,079
2017	6,927
2018	7,658
2019	18,514

Year	Detentions
2015	264
2016	129
2017	161
2018	167
2019	163

3. No information held. This information is not recorded separately.

Disclaimer

Due to the different methods of recording information across 43 forces, a specific response from one constabulary should not be seen as an indication of what information could be supplied (within cost) by another. Systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data. For this reason responses between forces may differ, and should not be used for comparative purposes.

The information we have supplied to you is likely to contain intellectual property rights of Northumbria Police. Your use of the information must be strictly in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) or such other applicable legislation. In particular, you must not re-use this information for any commercial purpose.