[2025] EWHC 2684 (KB)

DS Brownsell could not recollect if he was responsible for the wording of the questionnaire sent out by the enquiry team or not.

The questions asked of staff were:

“6.

What was the normal staff/patient ratios where you worked at Cawston Park?

7.

Have you any comments regarding staffing levels at Cawston Park?

8.

Have you any comments about the resources provided at Cawston Park (i.e. cleaning, food, hygiene etc)?

9.

Have you any comments about the standards of care provided at Cawston Park?

10.

What Activities/Therapies were/are offered to the patients at Cawston Park?

11.

Did any patients receive activities/therapies above and beyond that normally offered at Cawston Park?

12.

Do you have any knowledge of patient costs i.e.charge to P.C.T’s (Primary Care Trusts)?

13.

Do you have any comments about any aspect of bow [sic] Cawston Park hospital was managed? (Good or bad)

14.

In relation to the term ‘Extra Care’ at Cawston Park, have you ever heard of this term?

15.

If so what do you understand ‘extra care’ to be, how was it delivered?

16.

Where [sic] there any patients that required more staff time than others, if so please name them. NOTE: - Patient confidentiality will be respected.

17.

Any other comments you wish to make please do so below.

Mr Metzer suggested that save for question 16 the questions were “useless” and were irrelevant to the question of fraud. He suggested that the following questions should have been asked instead:

DS Brownsell disagreed with Mr Metzer about these proposed alternative questions. I have to say that I found the suggestion these were the questions that should have been asked or even that they would have been potentially better questions asked, to say the least a very difficult proposition to follow in the context of this case. The relevant issue can only be whether the questions actually asked were somehow inadequate or irrelevant or biased such as to evidence in the questioner, an inappropriate mindset. The questions asked were in my judgment clearly appropriate and sensible given the scope of the investigation. In any event as regards Mr Metzer’s suggested alternative questions the answers to questions 1 to 4 could not sensibly be anything other than in the affirmative given that staff were concerned with a cohort of patients in a mental hospital with a variety of illnesses/disorders; in symptoms and presentation, very far removed from a homogenous group. Questions 5 and 6 did not need to be asked of a wide range of staff as they could be asked of the clinicians/those who attend such meetings and the PCT commissioners. In my view Mr Metzer sought to substitute for an unobjectionable series of objectively sensible questions a set of questions which (save for the last two) could reasonably be described in the very terms he used for the questions actually asked.