All the Practice Directions have been updated to support the new consolidated Court of Protection Rules 2017. They have now been added to the Resources page and you can either download the complete set (make sure the bookmarks feature is switched on in Adobe Acrobat when you have downloaded the file so that you can click through individual PDs) or you can view the separate PDs.

​View the Resources page here

The Government has published an interim response to the Law Commission's report on Mental Capacity and Deprivation of Liberty but does not expect to respond in full until "Spring 2018"

The announcement was made via a written statement to the House from Jackie Doyle-Price (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health) who welcomed the report which they are now:

"carefully considering  .... We will now engage with a range of stakeholders to understand in greater detail how these changes can be implemented. We will also consider what enabling actions need to be taken to support the Mental Capacity Act ethos of greater empowerment and care centred around people, their wishes and aspirations."

​You can read the full statment on the Parliament website.

217,235 applications for DoLS assessments were received by local authorities in the year ending  March 2017, an increase of 11 per cent on the previous year.

The figures are published by NHS Digital and derive from a mandatory data collection of all local authorities, for DoLS applications received, processed or considered to be "active" in any way during the 12 month period.

Other key figures highlighted in the report are that 

• The number of DoLS applications that were completed increased by 45 per cent to 151,970 during the same period.
• The reported backlog of cases that were not completed as at year end increased by 7 per cent to 108,545 over the year.

You can read the full report and tables on the NHS Digital site.