Can someone please explain section 6(1)(a)?
Application was founded on two med recs but bed was withdrawn, patient remained in community for a few days and then conveyed to hospital. is this lawful?
The 2 med recs were based on 2 medical examinations and if an application is made founded on those two med recs, admission to hospital must occur within 14 days of the second of those examinations.
In the scenario you describe, if conveyance to the hospital (named in the application) happened in accordance with the above, it will be lawful.
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I don’t think that’s necessarily right. It depends on what you mean by ‘bed was withdrawn’. An application is made to a named hospital and only remains valid if that hospital continues to be willing to accept the patient (the immediate availability of an actual bed is immaterial for legal purposes). If the hospital had said ‘we cannot admit the patient after all’- which is what often happens- the application is invalidated and the s.6(1) power falls away, meaning there was no longer any power to hold the patient in the community and convey on a later date. They would have needed to start all over again with a fresh application.
The only way in which your scenario would have been lawful would be if the hospital had said, in effect, ‘We will still accept the patient, just not right now’, so delaying admission rather than refusing it. If the delay had been for a matter of hours I would agree with Guy. However, you say the patient remained in the community ‘for a few days’, making this unlikely.
Without knowing the precise circumstances I couldn’t say definitively, but I suspect that in the situation you describe the application would have lapsed, meaning that the ongoing community detention and later conveying was unlawful.