In the autumn we held two open days at BRE, aimed at an audience of specifiers and NHS colleagues. The open days covered demonstrations of the ligature reduction and robustness testing, and provided a background and introduction to the new standard.

As Gary Timmons, head of built environment, BRE, said: “It’s to try to help the industry to make those informed choices so they can make a decision as to what type of door furniture or what kind of curtain rail they should install, to understand the residual risks left in the environment, to help the clinician and everyone create a supportive but also safe environment for anyone that’s living in them.”

The tests conducted by BRE are designed to be repeatable and replicable. That is to say that for example, with the robustness, the force of blows is measured, and conducted by machine rather than manually. This means that the test is not dependant on the strength of the individual holding the hammer, but rather can be reproduced under factory conditions. The certificate issued by BRE also includes factory level examination, to ensure that the product tested is not just one from a line that performs to a standard, but that the whole line performs to the same standard. Of particular interest to colleagues at the BRE open day was the ligature reduction testing. Nick Todd, head of capital projects, Iris Care Group, said: “I’ve been following Informed Choices for a number of years, I’ve been around in this industry for approaching 20 years, so I’ve been looking at anti ligature and robustness from right back when we were attempting to do it ourselves with well meaning maintenance teams. I’m enjoying seeing how things are progressing and getting a proper testing standard so it’s based on science and not subjective opinions. Ligature products have often been badged as anti ligature. Occasionally you see reduced ligature creep in; you need to know what it is that you’re buying and that once you’ve installed it correctly, that it is the product that you needed.” The ligature reduction testing involves testing with graded categories of equipment which is likely to be available to people on wards, and testing with time limited slots of increasing duration. This gives NHS colleagues a good idea as to how long between observations is required to create a ligature, and is more supportive of clinical judgements that can factor in the relational safety aspect of staffing the ward.products.”

Colleagues were encouraged to sign the pledge committing to supporting the new standard and requiring their manufacturers to produce evidence of testing when supplying to their trust. To date we have 13 NHS Trusts and specifiers signing the pledge, and on the day we had a new signing, by Damian O Hanlon, Capital Project Manager, Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.

On the motivation for signing, Damian said: “It’s important to have standards, because I don’t think the mental health sphere has had a lot of that in the past and it just gives you some kind of certainty that what you are purchasing is fit for purpose. “ Since the open day in the autumn the publication of supplements to HBN 03-01 and 03-02 saw multiple mentions of the Informed Choices standard.

The Design in Mental Health Network working group welcomed these developments, with Phil Ross, its chair, responding to the report authors saying: “When DIMHN started the journey seven to eight years ago to create an independent evaluation of products for use in mental health spaces, having the testing scheme referenced within the highly influential guidance documents of HBN 03-01 and 03-02 was a distant (impossible?!) dream, many NHS Trusts read this as their design bible. I have no doubt this will encourage more NHS to adopt, and in turn, more suppliers to conform to a consistent means of discussing all forms of risk and comparing different products.”