Official Statistics

Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards, England, 2024 to 2025: background, quality and methodology

Updated 26 March 2026

Applies to England

Introduction

This publication provides findings for England from the Mental Capacity Act 2005, Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) data collection for the period 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025. DoLS are a legal framework applying to individuals who lack the mental capacity to consent to the arrangements for their care. Where such care may amount to a ‘deprivation of liberty’ the arrangements are independently assessed to ensure they are in the best interests of the individual concerned. The data is collected from councils with adult social services responsibilities (CASSRs), who are the supervisory bodies for authorising deprivations of liberty of adults in care homes and hospitals. For ease of reading and consistency ‘local authority’ will be used to refer to CASSRs throughout this document.

The aim of this publication is to inform users about aspects of DoLS activity at national, regional and local level. This document presents detailed information about:

• data quality
• how the data should be used
• how the data was collected and collated
• background on DoLS

The ‘DoLS dashboard’ is a Power BI dashboard (an interactive business intelligence tool) published alongside the data tables. It presents further insight of the data including breakdowns by local authority.

The Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards, England, 2024 to 2025 publication consists of:

• a statistical commentary on the data from 2024 to 2025
• associated data tables (in ODS format) providing:
  • data at local authority, regional and national level
  • a data quality assessment, including data completeness and integrity measures
• data tables in CSV format
• a background, quality and methodology document (this page)
• the DoLS dashboard
• a pre-release access list

The publication provides analysis of all DoLS applications that were active at any stage during the period, and concentrates on 6 main areas of DoLS activity:

• the demographic profile of people for whom a DoLS application was submitted, analysing data on the applications received for individuals during the period rather than the total number of applications
• applications received during the year, regardless of the status of the application at the end of the period
• applications completed (that is, signed off) during the year, regardless of when the application was received
• applications not completed as at year end
• analysis of the length of the application process, including compliance with the 21-day standard outlined in the Mental Capacity Act code of practice
• analysis of the duration (proposed and actual) of granted authorisations and the proportion of authorisations that ended early

Official statistics on DoLS prior to 2024 to 2025 were previously published by NHS England (see Mental Capacity Act 2005, Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards).

Power BI dashboard

The dashboard tool is presented in Power BI, which does not fully support all accessibility needs. If you need further assistance, contact NHS England.

Data collection

The data used in this publication was collated and processed by NHS England from an annual mandatory DoLS data collection from all local authorities in England. The collection requires one record per DoLS application with information on:

• the dates that applications were received and processed
• details of the main decisions made
• demographic information about the individuals involved - no personally identifiable data is collected

Any changes to the collection are communicated to local authorities through a data provision notice and are also detailed in the annual September 2025 notice and the associated social care collection materials. For 2024 to 2025 there were no changes to the DoLS data collection.

Recent changes to local authorities are as follows:

• on 1 April 2023 Cumbria Council split to form 2 new district councils in 2024 to 2025, namely:
  • Cumberland
  • Westmorland and Furness

Coverage of these statistics

The DoLS collection is an annual mandatory data collection for local authorities in England. For 2024 to 2025 it was sent to all 153 local authorities and responses were mandatory, regardless of whether DoLS cases had been handled in the reporting year by the authority. Returns were received from all 153 local authorities. Nil returns were acceptable and are valid, though none were received. All local authorities that submitted a data return reported some DoLS activity.

How these statistics can be used

Use these statistics for:

• monitoring trends in DoLS applications and authorisations for care homes and hospitals
• comparing local authorities in England
• comparing larger areas, for example regions

Do not use these statistics for:

• monitoring deprivations of liberty in other settings or for children
• inferring efficiency of local authorities
• making judgments about appropriateness or effectiveness of practice
• understanding outcomes for people who are deprived of their liberty

Who this publication is aimed at

This publication may be of interest to members of the public, policy officials and other stakeholders to make local and national comparisons and to monitor the quality and effectiveness of services.

In particular, local authorities may find this data helpful in shaping services and making improvements, especially in terms of benchmarking their services and comparing them with previous years or to share best practice with colleagues in other authorities.

DoLS teams across England are working to bring improvements to the DoLS processes and to service users’ quality of life and may use the data presented here to focus their efforts.

Officials in the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) can use the data contained within this DoLS publication to make decisions about national policy and practice.

Members of the public and other stakeholders, such as charity organisations, can also use this DoLS publication to help satisfy themselves that processes are followed and that officials are acting in service users’ best interests.

Statistical disclosure control methods

To prevent the risk of disclosure of data about individuals, counts fewer than 5 are displayed as a [c] in the data tables. All other figures have been rounded to the nearest multiple of 5. Percentages are calculated on the unrounded figures.

Data quality: 2024 to 2025

Data quality is measured on submission of annual data by local authorities and processes are followed to try and improve quality of data submitted. See the data quality statement below for further information. The following is an overview of the data quality issues impacting the 2024 to 2025 DoLS data:

Summary measures indicate that the data submitted was valid and complete to a high degree, with the final returns yielding a very high national completeness and validity score (99.4%). The annex tables that accompany this publication also includes some data integrity checks. There are 11 data integrity checks that are carried out across each record in each local authority return.

Missing data

There has not been any missing data as every local authority submitted data.

Not completed applications

As in previous years, the available data has been used to calculate the estimated volumes of applications not completed at year end. An estimated number of applications not completed can be created by taking last year’s reported number of applications not completed, adding the number of applications received and then subtracting the number of applications completed.

This calculation produces an estimated figure which is different from the equivalent figure reported by local authorities depending on such circumstances. NHS England has worked with local authorities to try to understand the reasons for this. From the local authorities who provided explanations for their variation in previous years one common theme was that this variation could be explained by the figures from the previous reporting period being higher than they should have been. This was due to several reasons, such as the previous return including applications that should have had a status of ‘not granted’ but the application was still showing as in progress, or data quality issues caused by migrating data from older reporting systems, or through duplicate recording of applications.

Backlog variance

A ‘backlog’ is where a local authority has DoLS applications that have not been completed by the end of reporting period, that is, applications that have not been fully assessed and signed off.

Variance in active authorisations

The DoLS data collection should include all applications that were active at any point in the year.

Occasionally, local authorities report significantly lower numbers of active authorisations on the first day of the reporting year, compared with the last day of the previous reporting year.

Accurate reporting of active authorisations allows us to measure the actual duration of granted authorisations and the number of authorisations in place throughout the year. DHSC will continue to provide the guidance document and support and encourage all local authorities to review this document each year to ensure they are including the correct records.

Incomplete actual end dates

During the data validation process, NHS England identifies cases where the ‘planned end date’ of the authorisation was during the current reporting period but the ‘actual end date’ had been left blank, indicating the unlikely scenario that the authorisation was still in place. For the 2020 to 2021 collection onwards, NHS England embedded this check into the automated data validation tool used by local authorities. This year, an ‘actual end date’ was provided for 99.45% of cases.

In some cases, local authorities leave the ‘actual end date’ blank to allow ongoing monitoring through case management systems. The issue has the effect of inflating the figure reported in table 6 in the time frames data tables, which is the number of authorisations in place on 31 March 2024.

Start date of authorisation recorded earlier than application sign-off date

There were approximately 5,700 authorisations across 26 local authorities where the ‘start date of authorisation’ had been recorded earlier than the ‘application sign-off date’. Some local authorities provided the explanation that this was an accurate reflection of local practice.

Duration of completed applications

Some local authorities reported cases which were resolved before the reported application completion date. We do not have further contextual information to understand the circumstances of these cases.

Specific data return issues reported by local authorities

A number of local authorities gave reasonable comments in their data return or validation report to explain errors, changes or issues with their data.

DHSC would like to thank these local authorities for their transparency. The table below summarises specific issues explained by local authorities that are not covered by the general comments above.

The number in brackets refers to the local authority code.

Northumberland (104)

Issue: calculated backlog.

Local authority comment:

Additional applications identified as having been received prior to 01/04/24, but due to late data input were not included in the 2023/24 submission, have been identified. These applications are included within the 2024/25 submission, hence the difference in backlog figures.

Sheffield (207)

Issue: calculated backlog.

Local authority comment:

The difference is due to processing on our case management system completed since the previous year’s DoLS data extract was taken resulting in backdated start and end dates crossing the year end which affects the initial starting position.

Cheshire West and Chester (327)

Issue: data submission summary.

Local authority comment:

The differences in this year’s return in comparison to last year can be accounted for improvements in our recording and the data being captured in a timelier manner. This has also led to improvements in the quality of the data such as episodes now being recorded as ‘not granted’ rather than as ‘cancelled’ (accounting for the change from 50 to 570 ‘not granted’ episodes).

Bexley (718)

Issue: data proportions.

Local authority comment:

In 2020/21, we revised the method for assigning a primary disability to clients with multiple disabilities. This included updating the hierarchy to prioritize Mental Health Disabilities. Instead of using the previous ascending order (1–9), we adopted a new sequence: 5, 6, 7, 8, 4, 3, 1, 2, 9. This revised approach has been maintained in subsequent years, including 2024/25.

Additionally, at the beginning of 2023/24, we introduced a Health Condition prompt in the DoLS forms. This change has led to more accurate recording of health conditions relevant to DoLS. As a result, the proportion of DoLS clients identified with Mental Health Disabilities has increased by 8% this year - specifically, a 2% rise in ‘Mental Health Needs - Dementia’ and a 6% rise in ‘Mental Health Needs - Other’.

Improved data capture has also contributed to a 3% decrease in clients recorded as having ‘No Disability’.

Merton (730)

Issue: completeness and validity.

Local authority comment:

Gender - 6 invalid entries, these were people whose gender was recorded as something other than Male or Female. There is no option to report this in the DoLS return template, so left blank.

South Gloucestershire (911)

Issue: data submission summary.

Local authority comment:

The number of records submitted has reduced by 13% - this is the result of an error that was identified with how the DoLS workflow for some records in 2022 we ended - this has now been amended so they will no longer appear in the return. This also accounts for some of the reduction in applications that are not completed (-28%) as these errors would previously have appeared as open applications - although the number of granted applications has also increased.

Devon (912)

Issue: conditional checks.

Local authority comment:

168 authorisations were made this financial year using 6 equivalent assessments. These were cases where renewals were taking place, and the relevant parties agreed that no substantial change had occurred, and it was therefore appropriate to use equivalent assessments.

Supporting information

This section provides further information about the DoLS process and background.

What DoLS are

Article 5 of the Human Rights Act states:

Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person. No one shall be deprived of his or her liberty (unless) in accordance with a procedure prescribed in law.

DoLS is a procedure prescribed in law when a person who lacks mental capacity to consent to their care or treatment is being deprived of their liberty in a care home or hospital in order to keep them safe from harm. The procedure involves having the arrangements independently assessed to ensure they are in the best interests of the individual concerned and to give those subject to a deprivation of liberty the means to challenge this.

DoLS were introduced as an amendment to the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and came into force on 1 April 2009. They were specifically introduced to prevent breaches of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) following the case HL v the United Kingdom (also known as R v Bournewood Community and Mental Health NHS Trust) was taken to the ECHR.

The case involved a regular outpatient to a psychiatric hospital with autism and learning difficulties who was deemed by the hospital staff to be unable to make decisions about the best place to receive necessary treatment. The hospital staff felt it was in his best interests to remain in hospital, but his carers disagreed and wanted to care for him at home. Because the hospital staff made the ultimate decision to keep him in hospital, the ECHR ruled that this detention did not comply with the ECHR and amounted to him being deprived of his liberty.

To prevent further similar breaches of the ECHR, the Mental Capacity Act 2005 was amended to provide safeguards for people who lack capacity specifically to consent to treatment or care in either a hospital or a care home that, in their own best interests, can only be provided in circumstances that amount to a deprivation of liberty and where detention under the Mental Health Act 1983 is not appropriate for the person at that time. In order to achieve this, 4 priority safeguards were developed:

• organisations wishing to deprive someone of their liberty must seek authorisation to do so
• where authorisations are granted, they must be reviewed regularly
• the individual being deprived should be provided with a representative
• the individual being deprived has the right to challenge a granted authorisation

The safeguards relate only to people aged 18 and over. If the issue of depriving a person under the age of 18 of their liberty arises, other safeguards must be considered - such as the existing powers of the court, particularly those under section 25 of the Children Act 1989, or use of the Mental Health Act 1983.

2014 Supreme Court judgment

A Supreme Court judgment of 19 March 2014 in the case of Cheshire West clarified an ‘acid test’ for what constitutes a ‘deprivation of liberty’.

The acid test states that an individual is deprived of their liberty for the purposes of Article 5 of the ECHR if they:

• lack the capacity to consent to their care and/or treatment arrangements
• are under continuous supervision and control
• are not free to leave

All 3 elements must be present for the acid test to be met.

A deprivation of liberty for such a person must be authorised in accordance with either the DoLS or by the Court of Protection or, if applicable, under the Mental Health Act 1983.

The Supreme Court further held that factors which are not relevant to determining whether there is a deprivation of liberty include the person’s compliance or lack of objection to the proposed care and/or treatment and the reason or purpose behind a particular placement. It was also held that the relative normality of the placement, given the person’s needs, was not relevant. This means that the person should not be compared with anyone else in determining whether there is a deprivation of liberty.

The Supreme Court also held that a deprivation of liberty can occur in community and domestic settings where the state is responsible for imposing such arrangements. This will include placement in a supported living arrangement. Hence, where there is, or is likely to be, a deprivation of liberty in such settings, this should be authorised by the Court of Protection. The Court of Protection has held that the acid test also applies in acute non-psychiatric hospital settings.

The judgment suggested that there may have been care arrangements in place that should have been subject to a formal DoLS authorisation, but applications had not been made. Consequently, it was expected that there would be a sharp increase in applications following the judgment.

In fact, the judgment resulted in a ten-fold increase in the number applications between 2013 to 2014 and 2014 to 2015 for health and care providers (who must submit requests for DoLS authorisations and Court of Protection applications) but particularly for the local authority teams who have responsibility for processing requests for authorisations and where appropriate, authorising any deprivation of liberty in care homes and hospitals.

It has also been clear from the official statistics and from speaking with local authorities that due to this increase in requests for authorisations, a number of local authorities were unable to process all applications in a timely manner and this resulted in a ‘backlog’ of applications awaiting assessment. It is particularly important, given the level of applications being made, that robust procedures are in place to ensure that particularly vulnerable individuals can be identified rapidly and appropriate action taken. The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) has shared practice in relation to prioritisation and produced a screening tool. The aim of the tool is to assist local authorities to respond in a timely manner to those requests which have the highest priority, and many local authorities are currently screening and prioritising DoLS applications.

Review and replacement of DoLS

In March 2014, a House of Lords Select Committee published a detailed report concluding that DoLS were “not fit for purpose” and recommended that they be replaced.

As previously described, at the same time the United Kingdom Supreme Court held that far greater numbers of people qualified to be dealt with under the DoLS system than had previously been thought. This has resulted in an increased number of DoLS applications for health and social care practitioners and local authorities to administer.

As a result of the select committee report, the government asked the Law Commission to undertake a review of DoLS. The purpose of the review was to consider how the law should protect people who lack capacity to consent to their care and treatment and who need to be deprived of liberty to receive that care or treatment. Article 5 of the ECHR guarantees the right to personal liberty and provides that no-one should be deprived of their liberty in an arbitrary fashion. The review also considered a person’s rights under article 8 of the ECHR to respect for private and family life. Improving care for those deprived of their liberty as well as supporting the involvement of families and carers in the process was central to the review.

The Law Commission published a report setting out their recommendations on 13 March 2017, together with a draft bill. They recommended that DoLS be urgently replaced, a conclusion supported by the Joint Select Committee on Human Rights in their June 2018 report The Right to Freedom and Safety: Reform of the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards which called for urgent implementation of a new scheme known as Liberty Protection Safeguards (LPS). The government introduced a bill in July 2018 to reform DoLS and the legislation received Royal Assent on 16 May 2019. The legislation provides for the repeal of DoLS to replace it with LPS.

The main changes include:

• applications can be made for people aged 16 and over
• LPS will apply to people in private and domestic settings
• responsible bodies will replace supervisory bodies to authorise arrangements that give rise to a deprivation of liberty
• introduction of a pre-authorisation review
• authorisations to be renewed for a period of up to 12 months on the first renewal, or up to 3 years on any subsequent renewal

The LPS scheme was due to come into force in April 2022, however, this was postponed with no new implementation date announced. Therefore, it does not directly impact on this release of DoLS data.

DoLS process

The DoLS application process begins when a potential deprivation of liberty has occurred or is about to occur. The care home or hospital (also known as the managing authority) must fill out an application form to seek authorisation for the deprivation. Once completed, the application form is sent to the local authority.

A managing authority can grant itself an urgent authorisation if an individual needs to be immediately deprived of their liberty to protect them from harm. When an urgent authorisation is used, details still need to be sent to the local authority. In these situations, an urgent authorisation section within a standard application form is completed. When a standard application relates to an urgent authorisation, local authorities have to complete the assessments within 7 days from the date the hospital or care home grants itself an urgent authorisation. If the standard application does not relate to an urgent authorisation, local authorities have 21 days to complete the assessments. Note that NHS England is unable to measure compliance with the 7-day standard as the date that the managing authority granted the urgent authorisation, that is, the start of the 7-day period, is not included in the DoLS data set.

Once the local authority receives an application, they must appoint at least 2 people to carry out 6 assessments. These must include a mental health assessor and a best interests assessor. The mental health assessor must be a doctor with the necessary skills, experience and training. The best interests assessor could either be an approved mental health professional, a social worker, a nurse, an occupational therapist or a chartered psychologist with the necessary skills, experience and training.

The 6 criteria that need to be assessed and fulfilled for an application to be granted are:

• age requirement - the person must be 18 years old or over
• mental capacity requirement - the person should be assessed as lacking the mental capacity to make a decision about the care or treatment they receive in a care home or hospital
• mental health requirement - the person should be assessed as having a mental disorder as defined under the Mental Health Act 1983 but disregarding any exclusion for people with learning disabilities
• no refusals requirement - the person must not have made a relevant advance decision, nor have someone appointed (donee) under a Lasting Power of Attorney, nor a court appointed deputy, which and/or who is in opposition to the proposed care or treatment
• eligibility requirement - a person is eligible unless they are subject to a requirement under the Mental Health Act 1983 that conflicts with the authorisation being requested, or object to being in hospital for the purpose of treatment of a mental disorder, or to being given some or all of the treatment in question, and they meet the criteria for detention under the Mental Health Act 1983

• best interests requirement - the aim of this assessment is to establish whether a deprivation of liberty is occurring or would occur, and if so, whether it is:

  • in the best interests of the individual
  • necessary in order to prevent them coming to harm
  • a proportionate response to the likelihood of them suffering harm and the severity of that harm

Where all 6 criteria are met, the application is granted, and this means that the individual can be legally deprived of their liberty by the hospital or care home. The authorisation can be granted for any length of time up to a year. If any of the 6 criteria are not met an authorisation cannot be granted. The assessment process should stop once an assessment fails to meet the criteria, with no further assessments being required to be undertaken.

During an authorised DoLS case, a number of reviews can occur, which will reassess whether the person should continue to be subject to a deprivation of liberty. Reviews may take place at any time during the DoLS period. There are statutory grounds for carrying out a review that are outlined in the DoLS code of practice.

The DoLS scheme can be used to assess and authorise deprivations of liberty in care home, hospice and hospital settings. However, a ‘deprivation of liberty’ that is ‘attributable to the state’ can occur in other ‘community settings’. This includes supported living arrangements and some domestic settings. In these settings, the DoLS scheme is not available and instead, an application must be made to the Court of Protection.

Process outlining the DoLS cases included in this publication

1. The number of DoLS applications received from the managing authority to the supervisory bodies in the reporting period are added to the applications not completed from previous years up to the end of the previous reporting period (that is, the reported backlog from last year) to give the total number of all applications received.

2. The applications are then either:
   
   a) not completed by end of the period - this is the new reported backlog
   b) completed during the reporting period
   

3. Applications in 2b) are then either:
   
   a) granted due to all assessment requirements being met. DoLS are then authorised for a maximum of 12 months and arrangements commence
   b) not granted

4. For applications in 3b) the process stops due to one of 4 reasons. The process can stop because:
   
   a) one or more assessment requirements were not met
   b) there has been a change in circumstances of the person subject to the DoLS application
   c) the person subject to the DoLS application has died
   d) there has been an administrative error

New and revised metrics

In March 2024, the Data Delivery Action Group, a governance and oversight group for adult social care national data collections and related statistical publications, approved the proposal to change the way DoLS granted and not granted data is reported. Non-completed assessments are now presented differently, to ensure relevant data tables include only those who have not met the bar for assessments with the granted and not granted numbers, rather than including non-completed assessments. This required no change to the data collection and headline metrics have not changed.

Historical data collection

Between April 2009 and March 2013, DoLS applications were processed by both local authorities and primary care trusts (PCTs). Local authorities processed applications from care homes and PCTs processed those from hospitals. During this time, NHS Digital collected data on a quarterly basis from both local authorities and PCTs in an aggregated form. Following the abolishment of PCTs in 2013, all applications from both health and care settings have been processed by local authorities and the returns are submitted at a case level on a yearly basis. The DoLS collection has remained mandatory for all local authorities.

The collection methodology changed for the 2013 to 2014 DoLS collection onward, following a ‘zero-based review’ of adult social care data collections. The review considered changes in the delivery of social care and looked into what information should be provided to monitor the most important current and future priorities. The main changes introduced were to move to collecting the data annually and at a case level, rather than quarterly and in aggregate. The 2013 to 2014 DoLS collection was developed following consideration of this feedback and was approved by DHSC, the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and other main stakeholder organisations including ADASS.

The data collection has evolved since then in fairly minor ways, with any changes being signed-off by the appropriate governance boards, which involves a process of approval consisting of the:

• DoLS working group - made up of a cohort of local authority DoLS leads and performance leads to advise on the data collection
• Adult Social Care Data Delivery Action Group - a national group overseeing adult social care data collections, publications and the working groups, consisting of NHS England, ADASS, Local Government Association, Care Quality Commission (CQC), Office for National Statistics and DHSC
• Adult Social Care Data Outcomes Board - a strategic national group setting the priorities for adult social care national data collections, publications and associated developments

During the COVID-19 pandemic period some aspects of the DoLS process changed due to new government guidance. This includes greater use of remote assessments and shortened forms. These measures ended in August 2021. In addition, local authorities have described the additional pressures the pandemic period has placed on them in relation to DoLS, with staffing, redeployment and capacity being common themes, as well as increases in applications. The impact of COVID-19 on DoLS has not explicitly been measured, but these differences may be reflected in historical data contained in previous publications and in the dashboard tool.

Changes to local authorities

Previous changes to local authorities are as follows:

• on 1 April 2019 Bournemouth and Poole merged to form the new Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole local authority - the inclusion of Christchurch has also reduced the size of the Dorset local authority, therefore, care should be taken when making comparisons over time for Dorset due to such changes
• in April 2021 Northamptonshire Local Authority split into North Northamptonshire Council and West Northamptonshire Council

Coverage in previous years

The DoLS data collection has received submissions from all local authorities in England in all years except 2016 to 2017, 2020 to 2021, 2021 to 2022 and 2022 to 2023.

Some comparisons to 2016 to 2017 will be skewed or not possible for Northamptonshire and the East Midlands region due to non-submission of detailed data by Northamptonshire in that year. They did provide some high-level data in order that some like-for-like comparison can be made across the 2 years at a national level. Users should exercise caution when comparing data between years for England and the East Midlands region.

Hackney was not able to provide any data for 2020 to 2021, 2021 to 2022 and 2022 to 2023 due to a serious cyber-attack, and Warwickshire were not able to provide data for 2021 to 2022. The key measures at national level have been estimated. See the ‘Data quality: 2024 to 2025’ section for more details.

Related resources and further reading

Mental Capacity Act Code of Practice

The Mental Capacity Act Code of Practice gives guidance to people who:

• work with people who cannot make decisions for themselves
• care for people who cannot make decisions for themselves

It explains what you must do when you act or make decisions on behalf of people who cannot act or make those decisions for themselves.

Deprivation of Liberty Code of Practice

The Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards Code of Practice to supplement the main Mental Capacity Act 2025 Code of Practice contains guidance on the DoLS. It is intended to provide guidance for professionals involved in administering and delivering the safeguards, who are under a duty to have regard to the code. The code is also intended to provide information for people who are, or could become, subject to the DoLS, and for their families, friends and carers, as well as for anyone who believes that someone is being deprived of their liberty unlawfully.

Monitoring the use of DoLS

CQC has a duty to monitor the use of the DoLS and they do this through a programme of inspections of care providers. They publish an annual summary on their findings within the wider State of Care report.

Further sources of guidance

DHSC commissioned the Law Society to produce guidance for practitioners on what constitutes a deprivation of liberty following the Supreme Court judgment. This guidance, Understanding when someone is deprived of their liberty contains advice for different health and care settings, as well as useful questions that can help identify a potential deprivation of liberty.

Data quality statement

This section contains a background data quality report. For more specific information about the quality of the latest year’s data, see the ‘Data quality: 2024 to 2025’ section.

Purpose

This data quality statement will provide users with an evidence-based assessment of the quality of the data used in the DoLS official statistics, reporting against the 9 European statistical system quality dimensions and principles appropriate to this output.

In doing so, this meets our obligation to comply with the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) Code of Practice for Statistics, particularly Principle Q3.1 which states that:

Statistics should be produced to a level of quality that meets users’ needs. The strengths and limitations of the statistics and data should be considered in relation to different uses and clearly explained alongside the statistics.

Relevance

The purpose of the DoLS collection and report is to inform the public and provide information which can help stakeholders make decisions about practice and policy. Information in this report will be of interest to organisations monitoring DoLS applications in England, such as DHSC, CQC, local authorities, hospitals and care homes. It may also be useful to mental health charities, individuals being deprived of their liberty and their families who are interested in more information about DoLS and the extent of its use.

Accuracy and reliability

As part of the data collection process NHS England release a spreadsheet-based validation tool through which local authorities can run their annual data to check the accuracy of individual records. Use of this tool is not mandatory, but many local authorities choose to use it to identify errors before making their submissions. There is no limit to the numbers of submissions that local authorities can make.

NHS England process all submissions following the mandated submission deadline and produce an automated data quality summary report for each submitting local authority. The data quality summary report examines variance in volume of activity in comparison to previous year volumes and the completeness and validity of the data submitted. It includes a number of data integrity validations, such as dates of sequential processes and identification of missing data. There is also the facility for submitters to record observations and explanations regarding their data. This leads to clarification being sought and double checking carried out by local authority officials, where figures are deemed to be outliers, potential errors and misunderstandings are known to have been eliminated.

Local authorities then have an opportunity to amend and resubmit their data and add any supporting commentary if they wished to before the second and final deadline. Senior sign-off is required before local authorities can make their final submission to indicate the data has been subject to full quality assurance.

NHS England works with local authorities in a bespoke way each year to resolve any residual issues, to ensure that the data submitted reflects as accurate a picture of DoLS activity in the year as possible. In some instances, this is not possible before the final data submission deadline; any data issues that were unresolved are noted in the data quality information. Typical risks to data quality at local level which we would note arise when there is a change in underlying systems or personnel.

The finalised data was subject to the same data quality analysis and the results are shown in data tables of this publication. It is hoped that this analysis will provide users of the report with a clearer sense of the quality controls applied to the underlying data at a national, regional and individual local authority level. NHS England also has a suite of ‘behind the scenes’ internal processes to manage risk to data quality, including:

• automated and tested processes to compile the national level data from local data submitted by providers
• automated and manual checking procedures
• various levels of approval and sign-off

There is a hierarchical governance structure overseeing the data collection. A DoLS working group investigates issues and changes and advises on how to manage these. This in turn reports to the Data Delivery Action Group, and then to the Data and Outcomes Board for senior stakeholder approval.

Timeliness and punctuality

This report contains data for the financial year covering the period 1 April to 31 March. The publication is released several months after the final submission deadline when local authorities provide the data to NHS England, following data processing, analysis and validation.

The release is in line with updated pre-announced publication dates.

Accessibility and clarity

This publication consists of:

• data tables (including statistics by local authority) in ODS format
• reference documents in HTML format
• a web-based Power BI comparator tool

The publication includes many of the Government Statistical Service recommendations on improving accessibility of spreadsheets for users with disabilities.

A list of the data items collected together with their definitions can be found in the guidance notes for the data collection and in the adult social care data dictionary.

The documents under the DoLS section can be used to identify what data has been collected from local authorities and to understand the terminology used within the DoLS reporting products.

Background information and context around DoLS legislation and the data collection is also presented as part of the publication.

Coherence and comparability

There are no other nationally published sources of data on DoLS activity with which this data could be compared.

Data is sourced from each local authority in England and compiled at national level by NHS England. There is no standard system used to record DoLS within local authorities and there are gaps in our understanding as to how these impacts on coherence and comparability. However, the metadata defined by NHS England and used by local authorities to extract the data from their systems and provide to NHS England is well defined and accessible to all. A DoLS working group, including those who use local administrative systems in their day-to-day work, exists to provide advice and clarification to DHSC on such matters when required.

In previous collection periods, DoLS applications were processed by both local authorities and PCTs and data was collected from both organisation types. Data was submitted in aggregate form and collected on a quarterly basis. From 2013 to 2014 onwards, all applications from both health and care settings have been processed by local authorities and the returns are submitted at a case level on a yearly basis. The DoLS collection has remained mandatory for all local authorities.

The 19 March 2014 Supreme Court judgment in the case of Cheshire West widened the number of individuals who may be considered to be deprived of their liberty and hence require an application in respect of DoLS. This resulted in a ten-fold increase in the number of DoLS applications from 2014 to 2015 onwards. While the analysis methodology has remained the same, this considerable increase in volume will need to be acknowledged when analysing data over this period.

Trade-offs between output quality components

To balance aspects of data quality, 2 data submission periods are made available for local authorities.

Data quality reports and support were made available to those local authorities who submitted by the first deadline, to give data providers the opportunity to address any issues found. Local authorities were able to make updates to their data during this validation period. After the second submission period the data set is then finalised. Any issues remaining are noted in the data quality information published, but no attempt is made to amend the data.

Assessment of user needs and perceptions

The collection methodology for the 2013 to 2014 and subsequent DoLS collections was changed following a ‘zero-based review’ of adult social care data collections. The main changes introduced were to move to collecting the data annually and at a case level, rather than quarterly and in aggregate. The 2013 to 2014 DoLS collection was developed following consideration of this feedback and was approved by DHSC, DCLG and other main stakeholder organisations including ADASS.

A working group exists with the aim to manage the development of the DoLS data collection to reflect the requirements of users and policy. The group includes representatives from NHS England, DHSC, CQC and local authorities. Changes to upcoming collections are published in advance.

We are always interested in knowing if the DoLS data collection is meeting your needs and, if not, what improvements we could make for the future. If you would like to make any comments, see the ‘Contact’ section below for information.

Performance, cost and respondent burden

The DoLS collection is mandated for all local authorities. The data collection process used in this publication is subject to assurance by the Data Alliance Partnership Board. This is to ensure that data collections do not duplicate other collections, minimise the cost to all parties and have a specific use for the data collected.

The burden of the DoLS collection has been assessed and approved, the burden of any changes to the collection are similarly assessed, to ensure that they do not create undue burden for local authorities.

In 2019 to 2020 a decision was made, in accordance with the governance boards for DoLS, to remove 3 data items from the collection in order to minimise the burden for providers in completing data items that were not used due to data quality issues.

NHS England regularly survey and seek feedback from those submitting the data in order to identify efficiencies and improvements that we can introduce to help local authorities. For example, in 2019 to 2020 the data submission system was amended to allow more than one local authority colleague to hold a system login, and in turn this reduced the burden on one person and ensured a better submission process for the data providers.

Confidentiality, transparency and security

All statistics are subject to a standard NHS England risk assessment prior to issue. The risk assessment considers the sensitivity of the data and whether any of the reporting products may disclose information about specific individuals. Methods of disclosure control are discussed and the most appropriate methods implemented.

DHSC and NHS England aim to be transparent in all activities. A description of the collection process and any issues with the quality of the DoLS data are documented in this publication.

DoLS data is submitted to NHS England through a secure electronic file transfer system called the Strategic Data Collection Service (SDCS). The submitted files are transferred from SDCS and stored on a secure network with restricted access folders. Only a limited number of analysts are granted access to the DoLS folders.

Contact

We’d like feedback from our users about how you use our products, how well these products meet your needs and how they could be improved.

For feedback and any further questions, contact asc.statistics@dhsc.gov.uk.