The court in Re NRA was faced with the need to devise a system which was compliant with Article 5 ECHR (deprivation of liberty) but not so onerous that it diverted resources away from frontline services, caused unnecessary interference in the lives of P and those who care for P, or resulted in excessive delay.

This case relates to deprivation of liberty procedure. In Re X and others (Deprivation of Liberty) [2014] EWCOP 25 (and No 2 [2014] EWCOP 37), Sir James Munby, the President of the Court of Protection sought to devise a streamlined process to seek to enable the court to deal with DoL cases in a timely, just, fair and ECHR-compatible way. The Court of Appeal has now held that Sir James Munby P had not been entitled to proceed in the fashion that he did, and that his ‘judgments’ were in fact not authoritative statements of the law.

Maria Ferreira, a woman with Down’s syndrome, died in an intensive care unit after she dislodged a tube with her mittened hand. An inquest was to be held but whether a jury was required depended upon whether she died in “state detention” under sections 7 and 48 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. A key issue, therefore, was whether “state detention” equated to “deprivation of liberty” under Article 5(1) ECHR and the relevance of the Supreme Court’s decision in Cheshire West. The Court of Appeal concluded Ms Ferreira was not in state detention.