Overstretched police forces are having to “pick up the pieces of a broken mental health system” on top of tackling crime, the emergency services watchdog has found.

More than half of all mental health patients who need help in a place of safety are taken there in a police car rather than an ambulance, according to Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services.

The Metropolitan police (MPS), the UK’s largest force, deals with a mental health call once every four minutes, and sends an officer just to deal with mental health issues once every 12 minutes.

Some health professionals are telling patients in need to call the police in order to beat long NHS waiting lists, the report said.

The watchdog said police were being dragged away from their actual job because officers were making up for gaps left by medical experts as a “national crisis” blights mental health services.

It is the latest report from an official watchdog to criticise the government in robust terms over the effects of austerity on policing, following on from a report from the National Audit Office in September.

Zoë Billingham, its author, said mental health services were failing to cope with the demands on them. “There has been a significant reduction in the availability of specialist mental health nurses over the last four years,” she said.

“So clearly there is an issue relating to increases in demands and the availability of specialist services, and you will know that has been recognised and there is further investment happening across the NHS in mental health.”

Billingham added: “We cannot expect the police to pick up the pieces of a broken mental health system. Overstretched and all too often overwhelmed police officers can’t always respond appropriately, and people in mental health crisis don’t always get the help they need.

“People in crisis with mental health problems need expert support – support that can’t be carried out in the back of a police car or by locking them into a police cell. All too often, the system is failing people when they most need help.”

Officers are covering for the NHS by taking patients to hospital, waiting with them while the right type of bed is found, and checking on or finding vulnerable people.

Police – instead of NHS staff – take ill patients to hospital about 12,000 times a year, or in 52% of cases, according to the research.

'I hope the prime minister and the home secretary read this report and hang their heads in shame' Police Federation chair John Apter

Peak times come when NHS services clock off at around 5pm, the report found, with repeat callers taking a disproportionate amount of police time.

“The top five individual repeat callers to the MPS (all of whom have mental health problems) called a combined total of 8,655 times in 2017. It cost the service £70,000 just to answer the calls.”

Mental health incidents require more time than other types of calls to police, but there is no national estimate for how long.

Merseyside police estimates that 25% of its officers’ time is spent on mental health issues, while Lancashire police calculates that 20,000 hours of response officers’ time, out of 70,000 hours every year, is spent dealing with mental health issues.

Billingham said that, while working on the report, she witnessed one incident last week in Leicestershire in which a man was threatening to jump from the seventh storey of a car park. The man lived, but it took 20 officers and police staff to deal with the incident.

The report sets out what officers have been alleging for a long time, that a collapse in mental health services was dragging them away from fighting crime.

Police Federation chair John Apter said: “The government’s austerity policies have led us to this dire state.

“I hope the prime minister and the home secretary read this report and hang their heads in shame at the situation they have not only created, but were warned about on numerous occasions.”

A spokesperson for the government said: “The government is clear that the best place for people suffering a mental health crisis is a healthcare setting which is why we are investing £2bn in mental health services, including £249m in rolling out liaison mental health teams in every general hospital by 2020-21, and are investing £400m to improve mental health crisis resolution services in the community.”

