Mental health calls ‘take 1,000 bobbies off beat’

Police forces could deploy an extra 13,500 officers on the beat for a month if they were freed from dealing with mental health incidents, an analysis of police data has found.

Police faced a 20 per cent increase in the number of mental health incidents that they had to attend last year to nearly 485,000 across 29 forces, according to data from 29 of the 43 forces in England and Wales.

This represents nearly 720,000 mental health incidents when scaled up across all 43 forces. This would equate to putting 1,036 bobbies on the beat for an entire year – or 13,470 for a month, according to the analysis of data obtained by Liverpool University.