What happened
In the early hours of 3 July 2015, five patients on Westferry ward at the John Howard Centre in Kenworthy Road, Homerton, took control of the ward. The unit is a medium-secure mental health hospital run by East London NHS Foundation Trust. The patients armed themselves with broken glass.
Six members of staff got into an office and were trapped there, the Hackney Gazette reported, fearing for their lives. Other patients on the ward, described as high risk, smashed fire exits as they tried to get out.
Metropolitan Police officers were called, among them a taser-equipped Territorial Support Group. Local officers came under a barrage of glass and missiles. They led all six staff out and contained the patients within the ward. Nobody was hurt.
The outcome
Five men were arrested on suspicion of violent disorder and false imprisonment and charged with public order offences. Two were sent to the high-security Broadmoor Hospital. Three were convicted of public order offences and sent to prison.
A trust spokeswoman said staff had followed the correct processes during a “very worrying and serious incident”: “find a safe area, make it secure and call for assistance”. She said incidents of this kind were rare given the needs of the patients at the centre, and that the Care Quality Commission had been positive about risk management there. The commission carried out an unannounced inspection in October 2015, after this night and after reporting of how many patients had absconded from the unit while on escorted leave.
What went wrong
On the trust’s own account, nothing did. That is the first thing to notice here: the staff used the protocol, it held, and the public position is that the system worked.
What the single source describes is a ward that was lost and then retaken from outside. Five patients were able to arm themselves and take the ward before anyone stopped them, and other patients smashed the fire exits while that was going on. By then the staff had no internal response left. Their safety rested on a room that locked and on police arriving.
What it teaches
A refuge room is a control only if three things are settled before the night it is needed: which room, who holds the key, and how anyone outside the door knows people are inside it.
At 03:00 a ward runs on a thin staff group, and once that office door shut those six were on their own until help arrived from outside the building. The police walked into a ward they had to learn in the dark, and it worked. That is a layout someone shared in advance. A current plan of the ward, walked through with local officers, is a lone worker control in a building where the staff cannot come to the door.
Questions for the room
- What is your designated refuge, who holds the key, and when was it last tested with the door shut?
- A patient pulls the fire alarm to get the doors open. What is your code for “this is not a drill”?
- Who at your local station holds a current plan of your building, and when did they last walk it?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: probable. One source was read: the Hackney Gazette, a single local-press account published almost a year after the event. No trust report and no inspection report are in the materials, so the regulator’s findings and any changes at the trust are unknown here. Staff and patients are not named: the account does not name them, and two patients were detained under the Mental Health Act rather than convicted.
Our lone working training covers the plan for staff who are cut off from help, including where to go and who counts heads.
Sources
- Hackney Gazette, 2016 · https://www.hackneygazette.co.uk/news/crime/22941275.horror-siege-john-howard-centre-secure-ward-revealed-staff-police-threatened-glass-missiles/
Reviewed 20 October 2026.