Medico-legal reports
Our Medico-Legal Report Service:
Our specialist and highly trained doctors provide independent evidence of torture for survivors seeking asylum in the UK.
We assist men, women and children who have survived the physical and psychological trauma of torture and who fit our remit criteria, which can be found here.
Download our form to make a referral
What is a medico-legal report?
A medico-legal report (MLR) is an important legal document, which is used to support a torture survivor’s asylum claim. It can only be requested by the survivor’s legal representative.
An MLR forensically documents evidence of torture. It uses international legal standards set out in the Istanbul Protocol.
For more information, download the Home Office’s Asylum Policy Instruction for medico-legal reports.
How does Freedom from Torture produce a medico-legal report?
Our expert doctors will ask the person to give a full history of ill-treatment in addition to information about their background and health. They will examine scars and injuries caused by torture. They will also document evidence of the psychological impact of torture.
An interpreter will be provided for people who do not speak fluent English.
Where we work
Our services are available in the UK, from our centres in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle and Glasgow.
Making a referral
In order to make a referral, please complete the referral form.
It is essential that you provide instructions (type of case, issues which need addressing) and the core documentation.
All referrals are considered against our intake criteria, which includes our remit.
We aim to respond to your referral within 7 days.
Demand for our service often exceeds our capacity. Where the referral fits our criteria, but we do not have capacity we advise re-referring at a later date. We operate a short waiting list.
If your referral is successful, we ask you to sign and return our terms and conditions within 2 weeks.
Your case will not be allocated to a doctor until we have received confirmation of funding and all requisite documentation.
Once we have allocated the case to one of our doctors, you will be provided with appointment dates and times. Clients are usually assessed over one face to face and one remote assessment, each appointment lasting approximately 2 hours. If your client has to travel to our centre for their appointment it is your responsibility to ensure that they have the funds to do so.
We ask that you complete our risk assessment form at least 7 days prior to the appointment. You will receive an email with the relevant form.
48 hours prior to the appointment we will ask you to confirm that the client is able and willing to attend and that travel arrangements are in place, if necessary.
We currently have a large waiting list and believe this is due to a recent increased number of referrals in response to the implementation of the Safety of Rwanda Act. As a result, we currently have no capacity for MLRs in our London, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle and Glasgow centres and are therefore closed to referrals for these centres until 31st July. We will update the website after this time.
Please be aware that we will generally require primary health care records (i.e. GP records), including all correspondence, before we can set up an appointment with a client. This approach is supported by case law. Medical records will need to be requested by a Subject Access Request (SAR) Make a subject access request | ICO. In our experience records can take up to two months to be sent following a SAR.
A medico-legal report is a complex undertaking, often involving more than one appointment with a client and, where needed, a physical examination. Our production times vary depending on the type of medical evidence requested, the complexity of the case and clinician availability.
For these reasons, the usual time for production of a full MLR can be up to five months from the point when we have received all the documents, letter of instruction, acceptance of terms and conditions and confirmation of funding. This timeframe is accepted by the Home Office as set out in the Medical Evidence API.
There may be times (such as at present - occasioned by the Safety of Rwanda Act), where demand is particularly high and longer delays occur.
Where individuals are accepted for an MLR, if necessary, a ‘time to examine’ letter can be produced setting out the relevant timeframes for production of the report to support any application for an extension of time.
