![\""Zero](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2_Steve-Barclay-comments.jpg\")
<\/p>\nRestraint levels at North East mental health and learning disability hospitals have fallen significantly<\/p>\n
“Zero tolerance” of restraints on mental health wards has been promised(Image: PA)<\/p>\n
A North East health boss says his staff “have made huge inroads” into ending the use of restraints such as handcuffs in mental health wards. James Duncan, chief executive of the Cumbria, Northumberland<\/a>, Tyne and Wear NHS<\/a> Trust, said that the goal this year is to eliminate it entirely, except for in the rare cases where it is within Government guidance.<\/p>\n The issue has seen the NHS trust criticised for several years – and in an inspection report published this week, Care Quality Commission inspectors reiterated that, while improvements had been made, it remained an issue in the region. The CNTW trust runs a range of in- and out-patient mental health and learning disability services across a huge area of the country.<\/p>\n This includes hospital settings for extremely vulnerable patients who have complex needs. Previously, after criticism from the mum of former patient Codie Lee Black, a Walker woman who died in 2023 at a mental health ward operated by CNTW<\/a>, bosses spoke of the introduction of a “talk first” approach and how progress to reduce restraints had been made.<\/p>\n Now, the CQC team has again highlighted the issue. In the latest report, they said: “The trust had made some progress in work to reduce restrictive interventions, particularly in the use of restraint. However, this required further progression and has been a key feature at the trust for several years.”<\/p>\n They added: “It was positive that the trust had included oversight of prone and mechanical restraint to the integrated performance plan in order to achieve their ambition of zero use of these methods this year.<\/p>\n “This was following concerns being raised about it\u2019s use. The trust had continued to work towards reducing restrictive practices, particularly the use of physical interventions, however there remained work to do.”<\/p>\n Speaking to ChronicleLive, Mr Duncan said: “We have made huge inroads into the issue of restraints. We have seen minimal levels of restraint use over the last year, and we now have the clear goal for the year ahead of no incidences of mechanical restraint – such as with cuffs – unless that falls within the accepted guidance. We will also have no instances of prone restraint.<\/p>\n “We are moving towards more therapeutic intervention and less restriction and that needs to be at the heart of our care.”<\/p>\n As previously reported, figures shared in summer 2025 showed significant reductions in restraint use. <\/a>Referring to figures for the 12 months to July 2025, the CQC listed improvements it had been informed of. These included: “Prone restraint had reduced by 64.5% (from 1,050 to 373 incidents); mechanical restraint reduced by 49.4% (from 160 to 81 incidents), and by over 80% compare dto three years ago; seclusion reduced by 22.3% (from 1,021 to 793 incidents)”.<\/p>\n Mechanical restraint refers to techniques such as using handcuffs, while prone restraint is a controversial method which sees someone held face-down.<\/p>\n Did you know you can make ChronicleLive a preferred source of North East news in Google, which will mean you get more of our breaking news, exclusives, and must-read stories straight away? Here’s more information<\/a> about what this means and how to do it – you can also do it straight away by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Restraint levels at North East mental health and learning disability hospitals have fallen significantly “Zero tolerance” of restraints…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[102,1906,6623,104,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-535995","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-mentalhealth","11":"tag-nhs","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}