The Supreme Court's judgment on deprivation of liberty

You may be aware that the Supreme Court has recently issued a judgment which significantly changes the legal approach to determining whether a person is deprived of their liberty. The judgement can be seen here A Reference by the Attorney General for Northern Ireland of a devolution issue under paragraph 34 o….

We would encourage you to familiarise yourselves with the judgment and carefully consider the implications for your services and practice. Please see the following links for further information: CQC statement on the Supreme Court's judgment on deprivation of liberty - Care Quality Commission and 2026-UKSC-16-Summary-for-website.pdf.

We ask that you refer to this updated position when making any new referrals to the DoLS team.  In addition, as the change came into effect immediately from 2 June, please review any recent DoLS referrals you have made. You should consider whether, in light of this revised approach, any of these referrals may no longer be appropriate.

We hope this offers reassurance whilst we wait for additional National guidance to be disseminated.  At this stage we don’t have further information, but if you have a specific query, you can contact the MCA DoLS Duty Team at Dolforms@essex.gov.uk

Essex County Council - Provider Hub
Skip to content
Text size:

The Essex Care Search Team issue an e-mail newsletter with news, information and updates concerning Essex Care Search.

If you would like to subscribe to receive future newsletters by e-mail, please send an e-mail to support@essexcaresearch.org and enter 'Subscription Request' in the subject line.

You can find and download our previous newsletters below:

Provider Newsletter - July 2025
Provider Newsletter - February 2025
Provider Newsletter - November 2024
Provider Newsletter - March 2024
Provider Newsletter - September 2023
Provider Newsletter - December 2022
Provider Newsletter - December 2021
Provider Newsletter - September 2021

Last updated: 12/02/2026
Previous Page Video Guides Next Top Tips