Kent Police has said sorry to the family of a teen who killed himself after calling 999 for help.

Matthew Mackell, 17, dialled 999 on May 6, 2020, in distress, saying he was going to kill himself and asking for someone to be sent to pick him up.

Although patrol teams were available that night, none were sent out to him and the Year 12 Skinners' Kent Academy pupil died in the early hours of May 7 in Dunorlan Park, Tunbridge Wells.

An internal review was conducted after the teen's death and identified a number of actions which should have been done differently, as well as failings with the software available to control room staff and their training.

A new enhanced mapping software which would have pinpointed the location of Matthew's last call to police, with a high degree of accuracy, had not been set to 'default' at the time on the control room systems, so it did not appear on staff's screens.

The mapping software which was set to 'default' pinpointed Matthew's location to a wide area, which led to the decision to downgrade the priority of his call from "immediate" to "high", which meant a patrol was not sent to search for him.

After settling a claim brought by Matthew's father, Kent Police said in a statement today: "Every day Kent Police deals with a high volume of calls from and about members of the public whose lives are at risk and successfully prioritises the deployment of limited police resources to manage those risks.

"It is a matter of deep regret to Kent Police that we fell short of the high standards to which we aspire in Matthew’s case. We offer Matthew’s family our sincere apologies."

It also acknowledged the way the teen's call to police was handled was "in violation of Matthew’s Article 2 ECHR rights as well as those of his father, Michael".

After the distressing phone call, the teen hung up and call handler PSE Amy Hopper called him back five minutes later, at which point he told her he was "fine". He hung up again when she asked for his name.

Checks made against the phone number to identify Matthew came back with nothing, and the control room's team leader PSE James Gregson also phoned him back in an attempt to offer help.

He marked the call as "immediate" and transferred it to the dispatch team, tracing it as coming from an area near Dunorlan Park, and expecting that a patrol would be sent out.

The team in the dispatch office then downgraded the call to "high" priority, based on the search area being so vast, and the only available action was to keep "contacting the phone for updates and information to identify the caller".

Following Matthew's death, Kent Police says it has improved its policies and training, including embedding Matthew's story into staff training.

The statement continued: "We offer our sincerest condolences to Matthew’s family, namely Matthew’s father, his mother and his two brothers. We hope that the actions of this settlement will help to honour Matthew’s memory, who we understand was a bright and caring young man.

"We will continue to work with Matthew’s family, who have shown an incredible dedication to suicide awareness, to improve Kent Police policies, procedures and training to ensure that something like this never happens again."