Mental health – conditional – discharge – delay – compliance – lawfulness
Where a mental health review tribunal, acting under s 73(7) of the 1983 Act, deferred a direction for the conditional discharge of a patient until necessary arrangements had been made, it had no power to police the work of the authorities required to make those arrangements or even to set a time limit. Delay and non-compliance by the local authority and/or the health authority could not convert the tribunal’s lawful imposition of conditions into an unlawful decision. Nor could the prospect of such delay and/or non-compliance prevent the tribunal from imposing conditions which it considered necessary and the court regarded as reasonable. The tribunal was not required to have available a care plan, setting out workable conditions, before imposing conditions