Overly rigid right care right person policy leading to deployment delays
College of Policing received 3 coroners' reports about this hazard between 21 Jul 2022 and 19 May 2026.
They came from 3 different coroners in 3 coroner areas. A similar concern was raised again 2 times after the first warning.
A published response was found for 2 of the 2 earlier reports, stating 3 specific actions.
The story, report by report
Spacing grows with the time between reports.
“some parts of these policies remain ambiguous or confusing. For example, in the Call Handling, Grading and Deployment Policy, there is no specific paragraph that explains that the Force Incident Manager should be notified of a high risk missing person”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ College of Policing responded, stating 1 specific action.Response (PDF) ↗
“We recognise that policing must have some medical knowledge and this is provided through our first aid programme. This programme and medical knowledge makes explicit links to our vulnerability training. To ensure police responders are equipped to effectively respond to missing persons, our training focuses on managing the full spectrum of vulnerabilities through effective and proportionate risk management. In reality, this means that College standards require front line responders to ask good”
Stated timescale: 15 September 2022
- 3 years later
“The emergency response had come about because of a new 'Right Care, Right Person' policy applied by emergency services that, in fact, delivered as a first responder, the wrong person delivering the wrong care to the deceased's residence.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ College of Policing responded, stating 2 specific actions.Response (PDF) ↗Response (PDF) ↗
“NWAS, in partnership with Greater Manchester Police (GMP), has identified a recurring thematic issue involving calls being passed from GMP to NWAS that do not meet the agreed threshold for Concern for Welfare as outlined in the Right Care, Right Person stakeholder meetings. These concerns have been formally escalated to Senior Leaders within GMP and to the Deputy Mayor for further consideration and action.”
“The College is reviewing the RCRP toolkit to ensure it provides clearer guidance on the assessment of risk in control rooms, including how to handle ambiguous or borderline cases where the threshold for police attendance may not be immediately clear.”
Web search (Tavily): Evidence found that the action was carried out
Right Care Right Person (RCRP) national guidance ... ↗ - 10 months laterClosely relatedConfidence 0.85 · higha different coroner
“An overly rigid approach to the Right Care Right Person policy and affinity protocol resulted in a delayed deployment.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Repeated from the earlier report:RightCarePersonpolicy
College of Policing responded.Response (PDF) ↗Response (PDF) ↗Response (PDF) ↗
- All reports to College of Policing
Each row is one judged link between an earlier and a later report. Open a row to read both quotes, found word for word in the originals.
2025 → 2026Catherine Morgan10 months after Elaine Tarbuck · different coronerClosely relatedConfidence 0.85 · high
Closely relatedConfidence 0.85 · highBoth reports highlight problems arising from an overly rigid application of the Right Care, Right Person policy, leading to inappropriate emergency responses.
Elaine Tarbuck · 7 Jul 2025
“The emergency response had come about because of a new 'Right Care, Right Person' policy applied by emergency services that, in fact, delivered as a first responder, the wrong person delivering the wrong care to the deceased's residence.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Catherine Morgan · 19 May 2026
“An overly rigid approach to the Right Care Right Person policy and affinity protocol resulted in a delayed deployment.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Stated action in the response to the earlier report
“The College is reviewing the RCRP toolkit to ensure it provides clearer guidance on the assessment of risk in control rooms, including how to handle ambiguous or borderline cases where the threshold for police attendance may not be immediately clear.”
2022 → 2026Catherine Morgan3 years 10 months after Gaia Pope-Sutherland · different coronerClosely relatedConfidence 0.85 · high
Closely relatedConfidence 0.85 · highBoth reports highlight problems with the application of the Right Care Right Person/affinity protocol leading to delays in deploying help for high‑risk missing persons.
Gaia Pope-Sutherland · 21 Jul 2022
“some parts of these policies remain ambiguous or confusing. For example, in the Call Handling, Grading and Deployment Policy, there is no specific paragraph that explains that the Force Incident Manager should be notified of a high risk missing person”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Catherine Morgan · 19 May 2026
“An overly rigid approach to the Right Care Right Person policy and affinity protocol resulted in a delayed deployment. Even where call handlers have real concerns that someone not returning to a mental health unit is a high risk missing person, the outcome of the toolkit not to deploy is the same if the individual's address has not been visited, even when told that they would not go there.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Stated action in the response to the earlier report
“The College very much recognise the issues you raise in relation to the lack of effective and consistent communication between services for people with neurological conditions and mental illness.”
Stated action · timescale: 15 September 2022
“We recognise that policing must have some medical knowledge and this is provided through our first aid programme. This programme and medical knowledge makes explicit links to our vulnerability training. To ensure police responders are equipped to effectively respond to missing persons, our training focuses on managing the full spectrum of vulnerabilities through effective and proportionate risk management. In reality, this means that College standards require front line responders to ask good”
Stated action
“NWAS, in partnership with Greater Manchester Police (GMP), has identified a recurring thematic issue involving calls being passed from GMP to NWAS that do not meet the agreed threshold for Concern for Welfare as outlined in the Right Care, Right Person stakeholder meetings. These concerns have been formally escalated to Senior Leaders within GMP and to the Deputy Mayor for further consideration and action.”
Stated action
“The College is reviewing the RCRP toolkit to ensure it provides clearer guidance on the assessment of risk in control rooms, including how to handle ambiguous or borderline cases where the threshold for police attendance may not be immediately clear.”
What happened next: Evidence found that the action was carried out
The College of Policing has published a Right Care Right Person toolkit that includes guidance on risk assessment in mental health incidents.
“New toolkit supports policing to respond effectively to mental health incidents in partnership with other agencies.”
“Right Care Right Person (RCRP) aims to ensure vulnerable people get the right support from the right emergency services.”
“While RCRP provides clearer guidance on when police should and should not be involved, its implementation is shaped by resource constraints, gaps in inter”
No specific action could be extracted with a verified quote.
No specific action could be extracted with a verified quote.
No specific action could be extracted with a verified quote.
- Each report's concerns were extracted by Nemotron 3 Nano on Nebius Token Factory, each with a quote copied from the report.
- Concerns from reports to College of Policing at least six months apart were compared by meaning (Qwen3 embeddings) and wording (TF-IDF).
- The closest pairs were judged by Nemotron 3 Super with reasoning on. Only identical or closely related, with confidence of at least 0.70, are shown.
- Every quote was checked by code as an exact substring of the original text. Names of staff and family are redacted, and the deceased are named by report title only.
| Link | Meaning | Wording | Judge | Coroner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 → 2026 | 0.72 | 0.31 | Closely related · 0.85 | different |
| 2022 → 2026 | 0.74 | 0.21 | Closely related · 0.85 | different |
Judge model: nvidia/nemotron-3-super-120b-a12b. How Nemotron did the work · Full methodology.
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This shows that a similar concern was raised again after an earlier report. It does not say why, and it is not a finding about any organisation or person. To report an error, see the corrections route.