Response to concern for welfare call - West Midlands Police, September 2017

On 30 September 2017, West Midlands Police (WMP) received a call from a member of the public asking for a ‘safe and well’ check to be made on their father at his home in Wolverhampton. They explained that their father had requested help and that he had serious health issues. The member of the public was unable to go and check on their father themselves.

Shortly after receiving the call, at 10.36 pm, WMP graded this as an incident requiring a one-hour response. A call handler made a call to the man’s mobile number and left a message for him to call 999 if there was an emergency. At 10.46pm the same call handler contacted West Midlands Ambulance service and requested a ‘safe and well’ check to be carried out due to concerns about the man’s health.

At 10.50pm, West Midlands Ambulance service advised that they were too busy to carry out a ‘safe and well’ check. The call handler contacted the ambulance service again at 11.24pm and made a further request for an ambulance to go to the man’s home. At 00.40am, a WMP officer went to the man’s home and found ambulance staff there. They found that the man had died. A post-mortem report indicated that he had died from a cardiac arrest, which was due to natural causes.

Our investigators reviewed logs and recordings of the calls, as well as a log of all incidents reported to the WMP force control room during that same period.

Evidence indicated that the WMP force control room was dealing with a large number of higher-priority incidents when they received the call about the man. We were of the opinion that officers and police staff had acted reasonably and appropriately when dealing with the call, by trying to make contact with the man on his mobile, then requesting an ambulance to attend the address, and chasing for updates.

Based on the evidence available we found no indication that any person serving with the police may have behaved in a manner that would justify the bringing of disciplinary proceedings, or had committed a criminal offence. We concluded our investigation in December 2017.