Pair will face no charges over care home death

Published on 11/01/2013 14:18

Two people arrested on suspicion of the manslaughter by gross negligence of a woman at a Copthorne care home will face no charges.

A 45-year-old woman from Tunbridge Wells and a man, 28, from HMP Dartmoor were stood down from bail without charge due to insufficient evidence to justify prosecution.

The arrests related to the death of Jean Halfpenny in May 2010 who was a resident at Orchid View care home.

Detective Chief Inspector Jeff Riley of Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team said: “Following a thorough investigation into allegations made to police regarding alleged neglect at the care home the final two people arrested in connection with these allegations have been stood down from bail. This decision is the result of consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service that insufficient evidence is available to support a prosecution.

“The police aspect of the investigation will now be closed and the matter referred to HM Coroner for West Sussex.”

The care home has since closed and reopened under a new name and new management.

In September and October 2011 police arrested three other people on suspicion of ill-treatment and neglect contrary to the Mental Health Act 2007 and the Mental Capacity Act 2005 in relation to an investigation into alleged neglect at the care home.

A 41-year-old woman from Crawley, a woman,55, from South Godstone and a man,49, from Burgess Hill were all later stood down from bail due to insufficient evidence to justify prosecution.

A Sussex Police investigation was launched in 2011 examining alleged neglect at the care home.

The investigation was carried out in conjunction with the NHS, West Sussex County Council’s Adults’ Services, the Care Quality Commission and HM Coroner for West Sussex.

The next of kin of all former patients who were subject of this investigation were visited by Sussex Police and kept informed throughout the investigation.

News

Looking for...

Featured advertisers

Jobs

Search for a job

Motors

Search for a car

Make Model Price from Price to

Property

Search for a house

Buy Rent

Bedrooms Price from Price from Price to Price to

What is a Cookie?
What is a Flash Cookie?
Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?
About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.
This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.
Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.
The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:
- Revenue Science ►
  
  A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Google Ads ►
  
  Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Webtrends / Google Analytics ►
  
  This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.
- Dart for Publishers ►
  
  This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.
- ComScore ►
  
  ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.
- Local Targeting ►
  
  Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.
- Grapeshot ►
  
  We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.
- Subscriptions Online ►
  
  Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.
- Add This ►
  
  Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.
- 3rd Party Cookies ►
  
  We use Advertising agencies to provide us with some of the advertising on our websites. These include (but are not limited to) Specific Media, The Rubicon Project, AdJug, AdConion, Context Web. Please click on the provider name to visit their opt-out page.

Pair will face no charges over care home death

Top stories

News