Mental Health

Kate Luscombe is a solicitor and an accredited mental health panel member. Kate is also a committee member of the Mental Health Lawyers Association.

As Joint Head of Department for Mental Health at Duncan Lewis, Kate supervises a team of dedicated practitioners that operate within special hospitals, medium security and low secure settings. She has extensive experience of dealing with a cross section of service users, including prisoners suffering from a mental disorder seeking transfer to hospital for treatment and those seeking to be remitted. She has also acted for patients in the community who are subject to supervised Community Treatment Orders and restriction orders seeking discharge.

Kate assists patients with raising issues and complaints regarding their detention and treatment with their clinical team and other professionals involved in their care, as well as attending Care Programme Approach meetings. She has acted for persons who have claims for unlawful detention and has negotiated awards.

Kate assists clients in judicial review claims, County Court nearest relative displacement proceedings, appeals to the Hospital Managers and applications to the First - tier Mental Health Tribunal and the Upper Tribunal. Her work includes an important recent case considering Tribunal practice, where she acted for the appellant in AH v West London MH NHS Trust (2011) UKUT 74 (AAC). This case considered whether the First-tier Tribunal erred in refusing a patient's application for it to sit in public in a mental health case.