In Ministry of Justice, ‘Mental Health Casework Section stakeholder update’ (July 2025) it is explained that s37/41 restricted hospital order patients (or s45A hybrid order patients) who had previously been transferred under s48/49 before sentencing would begin to have their first referrals earlier:…

I’m firmly of the view that the imposition of a s.37/41 necessarily restarts the reference clock. DD was really an anomaly, driven by the unsatisfactory hypothetical of endless cycles of conditional discharge and recall preventing any tribunal scrutiny. I think the most prominent issue is that of “j…

I’ve slept on it and I’m afraid have some more thoughts: The policy says it’s based on the decision about tribunal jurisdiction in CS, but really it’s based on the underlying logic of the reason for that decision. CS was about the fact that s70 doesn’t differentiate between different types of res…

I think a large part of the decision in CS (although I may be misremembering) was because the custodial sentence was replaced by a hospital order, so it took effect as if the hospital order was originally imposed when the custodial sentence was. I recall a point being that the patient would be disad…

The crux of it really is judicial oversight / supervision. That’s the underlying purpose of all of Part V Why? First, most of the compuslory measures are achieved administratively, not judicially. But those measures have a heavy impact on a bunch of rights, so the Act wants to ensure that it’s all …

Thanks for your detailed comments. Sorry for not replying yet, but I will need to sit down and read it carefully first!

Interestingly the AC case has just been listed to be heard by the Court of Appeal tomorrow! No surprises given the points made above about the inconsistency. If I had to guess, it’s probably going to turn around the “judicial oversight” point.

So it is! And it’s being live streamed. Wednesday 5 November 2025 [C] (appellant) v Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust & anr (respondents) (external link) By Appellant’s Notice submitted on 23 January 2025, the appellant below, appeals the decision of the Upper Tribunal (Administrative Appeals…

The Court of Appeal agreed that the tribunal loses jurisdiction in relation to an application made by a conditionally discharged patient when he is recalled: Cameron v SSJ [2025] EWCA Civ 1574 . I still don’t think this case means the MOJ policy of earlier referrals is wrong, as I still think that t…

In fact, if anything, doesn’t the Court of Appeal decision support the MOJ’s earlier referral policy? If the duty to refer following recall is “mandatory and unqualified” (and so is not affected by a subsequent change in status or by the statutory bar on applications) then why wouldn’t that apply to…

MHLO Forum

Lawfulness of earlier first statutory referrals by the MOJ (and the relevance of the change in status cases)

Law and practice Mental Health Tribunal