Police officers are not the right people to be responding to mental health incidents, and those in need require trained medical professionals, Wiltshire Police's Deputy Chief Constable has said.

On Wednesday, all 43 police forces in England and Wales signed a national agreement to step back from attending mental health callouts.

Under the ‘Right Care, Right Person’ agreement, police officers will only attend mental health callouts which pose ‘significant safety risks’.

In an exclusive interview with the Swindon Advertiser, Deputy Chief Constable Paul Mills has clarified exactly what that means.

Wiltshire Times: • Deputy Chief Constable Paul Mills who leads equality, diversity and inclusion for Wiltshire Police

“The policing role is predominantly to prevent crime and to assist people where there's an immediate threat to life or a risk of real immediate harm.

“Increasingly, we are attending a large number of instances where actually we're not the right agency.”

In many instances, the force says that showing up at someone’s house can make them feel that they’re being criminalised, which can have negative impacts for somebody experiencing a mental health incident.

“What they need is properly trained, experienced people that are able to give them the right care in the setting which they find themselves in. That’s not us,” the deputy chief constable explained.

To cope with police forces scaling back, it was announced yesterday that an extra £2.3 billion will be put into mental health services nationally, with the aim of introducing a 24-hour mental health crisis helpline.

Which mental health incidents will police still attend?

When a call comes in from a member of the public, police will use a list of pre-set questions to assess what the harm is, what the risk is to the individual concerned, and whether or not it is a policing matter.

“We want to be really, really clear with the public if there is that immediate threat to life or immediate real risk of significant harm and it's appropriate for the police service to attend, we will always attend,” said DCC Mills.

“However, what we’re seeing across England and Wales at the moment is calls asking ‘would you mind going over and checking on somebody’ when there isn’t that real immediate threat.”

In Wiltshire, it’s estimated that around 1,000 hours of officers' time per month could be saved by not attending ‘lower risk’ incidents.

The initiative is set to formally launch in early 2024.

“The next step will be designing an approach which makes sure that the right agency is responding to a person at their point of need to get the best outcome," DCC Mills continued.

“It’s important to us that nobody falls between the cracks of the pavement."