Our charity has joined Mencap and Mind to respond to today’s Supreme Court ruling that removes the framework known as Cheshire West, warning that it strips fundamental human rights protections from potentially hundreds of thousands of disabled people.
About the ruling
The ruling dismantles a landmark 2014 legal framework known as Cheshire West, which established a universal “acid test”. This means that if someone lacks the mental capacity to consent to their care and living arrangements, is under continuous supervision and control, and is not free to leave, they were legally ‘deprived of their liberty’.
This triggered vital legal safeguards (DoLS), requiring an independent assessor to regularly inspect care homes, supported living arrangements and locked units to ensure the placement is safe, justified, and in the person’s best interests. Today’s decision tears up those protections.
What are the new rules?
The judgment introduces a regressive legal standard that will fundamentally alter the lives of potentially hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people:
- The vast majority of people currently protected by the DoLS safeguards system in the UK will likely see their existing checks and independent inspections cancelled.
- The Court implies that individuals with profound cognitive disabilities cannot be "deprived" of liberty because their condition limits their ability to experience it—a view that devalues their fundamental rights.
- The Court has suggested that in borderline cases, for a deprivation of liberty to exist, a care setting must closely mirror the extreme confinement of a prison cell.
- If a vulnerable person appears passive or does not actively protest their arrangements, the law may recognise this as "consent" — even if they are subjected to routine physical restraint or chemical sedation or have never known a life without a high level of restriction.
What is the impact of this ruling?
Under this new ruling, multiple vulnerable groups will be impacted across social care and healthcare sectors. If an autistic person with high support needs, someone with a serious mental illness, or a person with a severe learning disability is locked in a care setting and sedated, but does not actively protest, they will no longer be considered "confined" by the state. They will lose their automatic right to independent reviews, a legal advocate, and protection from closed care cultures.
For example, in psychiatric and crisis wards, if an individual experiencing a severe psychiatric crisis, acute psychosis, or clinical depression is admitted to a mental health hospital ward as an "informal patient," they frequently lack the mental capacity to consent to their stay and therefore do not have any of the protections of independent reviews.
Similarly in social care and supported living, a person may lack capacity if they have an acquired brain injury, a severe learning disability, or are an autistic person with high support needs, and could be locked in a care setting, subject to blanket restrictions, or kept under 24/7 continuous supervision.
In specialised dementia care, an older adult with advanced dementia or a mental health condition may live at home under highly restrictive chemical and physical restraint protocols, with no external checks.
Our joint statement from Mencap, Mind and the National Autistic Society:
