Growing numbers of patients with learning disabilities are being physically restrained in mental health units, despite ministers telling NHS trusts to use such techniques less often.

Staff in NHS mental health hospitals deployed restraint on such patients 22,000 times last year, almost 50% more than the 15,000 occasions in 2016, BBC research has found.

That included a rise in face-down or “prone” restraint, which is particularly controversial and has been widely criticised as dangerous. Used 2,200 times in 2016, the figure rose to 3,100 in 2017.

The disclosures, made by Radio 4 programme File on 4, prompted criticism from health charities and the minister who, in 2014, ordered trusts to reduce their use of restraint.

“The treatment of people with learning disabilities within these inpatient units is one of the biggest domestic human rights issues of our time,” said Dan Scorer, the head of policy and public affairs at Mencap.

“These horrific revelations reinforce the fact that the government and NHS England must urgently do a detailed analysis about where this is happening, and why the use of restraints has increased so dramatically in recent years.”

Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat MP and ex-mental health minister who introduced guidelines to reduce the use of restraint in mental health settings, said the rise in face-down restraint was absolutely shocking. The practice is “extraordinarily demeaning” for patients, he added.

“I had wanted and expected to see a substantial decline in the use of restraint and that hasn’t happened. That’s really shameful when we know it’s possible in very many cases to avoid the use of restraint at all through a more sophisticated approach to people in inpatient settings,” he said.

Viv Cooper, the chief executive of the Challenging Behaviour Foundation, said: “Restrictive interventions, such as physical and chemical restraint, can have a significant and lifelong traumatic impact.”

File on 4 has also found that another key government pledge on mental health is unlikely to be met.

Ministers promised to move 35-50% of people with learning disabilities and autism out of hospitals – where many stay for a long time – into community-based settings, such as supported housing, by March 2019.

But the number of such patients living in inpatient units in England has only fallen from 2,600 to 2,400, while the number of under-18s being care for there has almost doubled.

The Department of Health and Social Care said more than 410 beds have been decommissioned since 2015 and that the process of gradually reducing their numbers would continue beyond next year’s hoped-for deadline.