A TEAM of specialist nurses wrote to NHS executives to raise ‘significant concerns’ about the use of dangerous face-down restraint techniques on mental health wards in Lancashire, it has been revealed.

In a letter to directors at Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust, the organisation’s Violence Reduction Team threatened to suspend their training programme unless bosses agreed to immediately phase out the use of face-down restraint, also known as prone restraint, across the inpatient wards.

The Lancashire Telegraph has obtained the letter and a cache of internal emails under Freedom of Information laws, as part of an investigation.

Sent by the trust’s violence reduction lead, Iain Harbison, on January 5, the letter said: “This suspension of physical restraint training will remain in place until the trust board formally accepts our alternative physical restraint model.

“Both this and the phasing out of prone restraint will need to be formally communicated to all staff by the trust board; only then will we have full confidence that our recommendations relating to reducing restrictive practices and the phasing out of prone restraint have been fully accepted by the trust’s executive team(s).

“It is unfortunate that we have reached such a situation, however, as specialists in the area of violence reduction and restraint...we feel that the current situation is completely untenable and the seriousness of the situation requires immediate action.”

According to Mr Harbison’s subsequent emails, in which he thanked his colleagues for ‘putting your heads on the block’, executives accepted the demands.

Last month, the Lancashire Telegraph revealed the extent to which prone restraint had been used on the mental health wards on the Blackburn and Burnley hospital sites.

But there has been a dramatic reduction in cases since the letter was sent.

A Government report published last April told trusts to eliminate the use of prone restraint within two years, following evidence that it was dangerous and humiliating for patients.

The removal of prone restraint at Lancashire Care was initially agreed for December 1, after months of work from the violence reduction team. But they appear to have felt undermined by an email from Caroline Johnson, a deputy clinical director, on December 9, which said: “It has been agreed that we will NOT implement any changes to restraint techniques until we have completed a robust options appraisal of safe alternatives....”

The trust declined to comment.