What this is
The Care Quality Commission’s statutory annual report on the Mental Health Act, monitoring the Act for 2024 to 2025, published on 29 January 2026 and presented to Parliament. This page describes one part of it: the restrictive practices chapter, which reports average monthly counts for the year and compares them with 2023/24.
The figures come from NHS England’s Mental Health Services Data Set monthly statistics, collected under the reporting duty in the Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Act 2018. The population is inpatient providers in adult and children’s mental health services, NHS and independent.
What it records
Between 2023/24 and 2024/25 the average number of restrictive interventions a month rose 24%, from 13,240 to 16,462, according to CQC’s figure 2 and its caption.
The same chapter records 22% more people subject to one each month, 2,929 rising to 3,563, and a 26% rise in the average monthly number of intervention types, meaning physical, chemical, mechanical and seclusion.
CQC’s conclusion is that the data “points to a picture of increased use”, and its analysis suggests more people were subjected to them more often. According to CQC’s report, new referrals to secondary mental health services ran at 453,930 a month and bed occupancy at 90%, against a recommended 85% threshold. It also records 9% of roles in mental health trusts unfilled in March 2025.
How to read it
The category is the first problem. “Restrictive interventions” bundles physical restraint, chemical restraint, mechanical restraint and seclusion into one count, so a 24% rise says the total bundle grew. It says nothing about which element grew. The published figures here do not separate a hold from an injection, or either from a locked door.
The second problem is the confounder CQC flags itself: the rise may partly reflect better reporting. A count that depends on providers recording correctly cannot be read as a clean behavioural trend in either direction.
The third is the denominator. These are averages per month, not rates. They are not adjusted for occupied beds, admissions, or how unwell the people were. NHS England’s dashboard carries a weighted indicator per 1,000 occupied bed days; this chapter does not.
So quote the volume, not the trend. Sixteen thousand interventions a month affecting about three and a half thousand people is honest with the caveat attached. “Restraint rose 24%” needs a definition and a warning, and it is not what the document measured.
Where it stops
One year, one nation, inpatient mental health only. Physical restraint in a care home, a school, a prison or a police van is not in this count, and neither is restraint in an emergency department.
The figures count interventions, not their duration, position, or whether anyone was hurt. No outcome data sits beside them, so this document cannot say how often restraint caused injury or death, and it does not try.
The underlying series is published by NHS England as an interactive dashboard rather than open tables, so the CQC report is the readable rendering of it.
Sources
- Care Quality Commission, monitoring the Mental Health Act, 2024 to 2025, published 29 January 2026
- NHS England (Digital), mental health services monthly statistics: restrictive interventions dashboard
If your service reports restrictive interventions monthly and the numbers are not moving, our restraint reduction training covers what to do with the recording before it reaches a board.
Reviewed 20 October 2026.