Police response to concerns for welfare of woman – West Yorkshire Police, March 2018

A member of the public called West Yorkshire Police (WYP) in relation to a concern they had for a family friend, whom they had not been able to contact for three days. The member of the public described the friend as vulnerable and explained the friend had mental health issues. Police dispatchers conducted checks in relation to the call. Following this, an inspector authorised the incident be closed with no further police action. The following day another member of the public called WYP concerned for the same person. WYP officers attended the person’s address and found the person dead.  

During our investigation, we interviewed WYP control room staff, examined the incident log and obtained recordings of the calls made in relation to the incident. Investigators also obtained statements from call handlers and a mental health nurse working in the police control room. 

We treated a member of police staff and a police inspector as subjects in the investigation.

We concluded our investigation in December 2018 and found the inspector and the member of police staff had no case to answer for misconduct. 

However, we concluded that the member of police staff would benefit from further training in relation to risk assessments. This was conducted under management action and was not a disciplinary matter.

We carefully considered whether there were any learning opportunities arising from the investigation. We make learning recommendations to improve policing and public confidence in the police complaints system and prevent a recurrence of similar incidents. In this case, we did not identify any organisational learning for WYP.