Almost 1,000 patients reported as missing to Yorkshire’s largest police force

PATIENTS WERE reported missing from hospitals and other NHS sites in West Yorkshire on almost 1,000 occasions during the past year, new figures have revealed.

The statistics, shared by West Yorkshire Police Federation, shed further light on the increasing number of people going missing.

It follows our special report last month, which revealed the equivalent of 67 people were reported missing in Yorkshire every day during the last year.

Federation chairman Nick Smart said: “The staff say they don’t have the powers to get hands on to stop them [leaving]. They’ll phone up, say they’re high risk, then it’s ‘over to you police’.”

The number of people reported missing by NHS trusts in West Yorkshire in the year to the end of June was 982 – an increase of 65 per cent on the previous 12 months. Leeds was the division with the highest total number of missing patients, up by 70 per cent to 426 in 2015/16.

Guy Brookes, clinical director for Leeds Care Group, said they informed police if someone went missing but only requested a search for the most vulnerable.

“If we were concerned because of their health, quite sensibly it would be the health services going out to check on them,” he said. “The vast majority of times really it will be for information.”

Both West Yorkshire Police and the federation have warned that the rise in missing persons cases of all kinds is pushing the county’s force to breaking point.

Mr Smart said: “If you’re not going to give us more officers, give the NHS more staff or powers at source so they can stop it impacting on police resource.”

But Dawn Marshall, nurse director at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “While we cannot detain people who do not wish to stay in hospital, staff are required to act in the best interest of vulnerable patients. Under the Mental Capacity Act staff have a duty of care to maintain the patient’s safety and prevent the patient leaving, and a deprivation of liberty order is often applied in these circumstances.”