The owners or managers of an establishment acting as a place of safety have a legal obligation to ensure that a detained person cannot leave the premises until he or she has been fully assessed, which may take up to 24 hours.
Invariably, therefore, to ensure safeguarding of both the detained person and the public, places of safety are typically restricted to psychiatric hospitals and police custody suites, and tend to exclude open general hospital wards and accident and emergency departments.
For the same reason, it is most unusual for friends' or relatives' homes to be designated places of safety.
The decision whether to detain a particular person in a psychiatric hospital or in police custody is also subject to local agreements.
It is a common arrangement for people to be taken to a psychiatric hospital unless they have a history of violence or are thought to be under the influence of alcohol or recreational drugs, in which cases they would be taken into police custody.