Annual DoLS case numbers hit 300,000 following 11% hike

English councils received 300,765 Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) applications in 2022-23 – a new record – following an 11% hike in case numbers, reveal official figures.
Practitioners completed a record 289,150 applications, up 14% on the year before, meaning that growth in the number of concluded cases has averaged 10% over the past five years.
However, the backlog of cases left incomplete at the end of the reporting year grew by 2% from 2021-22, to 126,000, while the prop