Place of safety order - warrant specifying social worker and medical practitioner to accompany police officer executing it - execution of warrant not lawful unless named individuals accompanying officer

Ward v Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis and Another: CA: (Lord Justice Schiemann and Lord Justice Latham): 30 July 2003

A magistrate issued a warrant under section 135(1) of the Mental Health Act 1983, authorising a police officer to remove the claimant to a place of safety.

The warrant specified the individual social worker and medical practitioner who were to accompany the police officer executing the warrant, but individuals other than those named in the warrant in fact accompanied him.

In deciding a preliminary issue in an action by the claimant claiming damages for false imprisonment against the first defendant, the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis, and the second defendant, the St Helier NHS Trust, a recorder concluded that the fact that the individuals accompanying the officer were not those named in the warrant did not affect the validity of the warrant or its execution.

The judge on appeal upheld the recorder's decision.

Section 135(4) required an approved social worker and a registered medical practitioner to accompany the police officer, but it did not require them to be identified.

The claimant appealed.

Jonathan Cohen (instructed by the Bar Pro Bono Unit) for the claimant; Paul Michell (instructed by the Directorate of Legal Services, Metropolitan Police) for the first defendant; Fenella Morris (instructed by Capsticks) for the second defendant.

Held, allowing the appeal, that any condition sensibly relating to the execution of a warrant to protect the interests of the person liable to be removed while furthering the object of the grant of the warrant might be imposed if a magistrate considered it appropriate; that as section 135 entitled any social worker or registered practitioner to accompany the police officer, a condition circumscribing the individuals who might accompany the officer was a proper exercise of the power to grant the warrant; that the warrant was, therefore, valid but its execution did not comply with the lawful condition imposed on its exercise; that the names of those who were to accompany the police officer had been inserted by the person applying for the warrant for a good reason and it could not be assumed that, had they not been identified, the magistrate would have granted the warrant.