Police fed up with mental health call-outs to start billing council

A POLICE force is to start sending bills to the local authority after revealing that officers spent more than 50,000 hours last year dealing with mental health related calls.

Bedfordshire Police said the demand from non crime-related calls meant officers were unable to do their job.

Festus Akinbusoye, Bedfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner, said the force had received more than 10,000 calls for mental health-related matters in 2021, equating to 53,000 police hours.

He said the diversion of police resources was unsustainable and he was planning to send the bill for the lost police hours to the relevant authority.

Mr Akinbusoye told how on one occasion two officers had spent nine hours driving a vulnerable child to another part of the country because social services had been unable to help.

And he said thousands of police hours were being lost each year on “hospital watch”, where officers were forced to sit in accident and emergency units with people who had been injured in incidents but were not under arrest.

Mr Akinbusoye said such distractions were preventing officers from being out on the beat catching criminals and it was not fair on council tax payers.

He said: “If you ask any member of the public what they think the police should be doing they will tell you they should be going after criminals, catching them and locking them up.

“In 2021 there were 10,000 calls for mental health-related jobs that equated to 53,000 police hours.

“Police forces don’t say no. They say yes to everything. But some forces are now refusing to take those jobs and the demand for those types of jobs has fallen by 70 per cent.

“Police officers are now providing the service that local authorities and mental health should be providing, at no cost, and my taxpayers, who are paying the police precept, that is not what they want the police doing and so someone has got to pay for it.

“So I have already announced during my delivery board meeting this week that I am going to start sending the bill to the local authorities and the clinical commissioning groups for mental health. It just cannot continue.”