Government announces successful bids to £15 million mental health fund and opens the bidding process for the remaining £8.9 million of funding to the rest of England.

Forty-one projects will benefit from a share of £15 million to improve provision of mental health places of safety, the government has announced.

The Department of Health funding is supporting the creation of new places of safety and the refurbishment of existing sites, to prevent people experiencing a mental health crisis, who have committed no crime, from being placed in a police cell.

To read more, go to: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-announces-successful-bids-to-15-million-mental-health-fund

The first wave of bids, totalling £6.1 million, have been awarded to 15 NHS trusts and partnership organisations covering 11 police force areas. They have been focused where use of police cells as a place of safety has previously been amongst the highest in the country

Wave one successful bidders in the East Midlands and East of England include:

• Derby and Derbyshire Crisis Care Concordat group - new adult health-based place of safety and crisis vehicles for driving vulnerable people across the East Midlands (£695,000)

• Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust - A new psychiatric decision making unit; a rapid response vehicle for street triage; a new child and adolescent mental health (CAMHS) section 136 suite (£406,000)

• Nottinghamshire Healthcare Foundation Trust; East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust - Crisis café; a new psychiatric decision making unit; refurbishment to an existing health-based place of safety in Nottingham; street triage vehicles for use across the East Midlands (£586,000

• North & South Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trusts - Upgrading health-based places of safety across 6 Essex locations including Basildon, Chelmsford, Colchester, Harlow and Rochford (£818,500)

The government has also opened the bidding process for the remaining £8.9 million of funding to the rest of England. Through local Crisis Care Concordat groups, organisations including mental health trusts, clinical commissioning groups, police forces, local authorities and the voluntary and community sector can bid for the funding.