Following a public consultation in July 2019, the Government announced a new Statutory guidance - Serious Violence Duty which will ensure relevant public services work together to share data and knowledge, and allow them to target interventions to prevent and reduce serious violence.
Find out more about serious violence duty and how the council contributes to reducing and preventing serious violence in the borough.
The Home Office serious violence strategy defines serious violence as specific types of crime such as homicide, knife and gun crime and areas of criminality where serious violence or its threat is inherent, such as in gangs and county lines drug dealing.
Not one agency can tackle serious violence on its own, and in the borough we work closely with a range of partners to prevent and reduce serious violence, which includes taking a whole-system approach to understand the causes and consequences of serious violence, focused on prevention and early intervention.
The Serious Violence Duty requires the council and other authorities to work together to identify the kinds of serious violence in the area, the causes of that violence and to prepare and implement a shared strategy for preventing and reducing serious violence in the area. This work is coordinated across Hampshire by the Violence Reduction Partnership (VRP). The council are active members of the VRP.
The Violence Reduction Partnership has developed a Serious Violence Strategic Needs Assessment, which has informed the Serious Violence Response Strategy and delivery plan. The strategy sets out the VRPs approach to tackling serious violence across the Hampshire area. The response strategy is reviewed and refreshed regularly.
Serious Violence Strategic Needs Assessment
Serious Violence Response Strategy
The Safer North Hampshire Community Safety Partnerships (CSP) has a duty to include serious violence as an explicit priority in its strategies and plans.
The council supports the facilitation of a local level serious violence CSP sub-group. The sub-group meets quarterly, and includes representatives from both statutory, voluntary and community sector partners, with support from the Hampshire Violence Reduction Unit. The sub-group is currently developing a local level action plan, taking in local level knowledge and context which will further complement the VRP Serious Violence Response Strategy.
Following the implementation of the Police, Crime, Courts and Sentencing Act 2022, every area has a statutory duty to reduce serious violence. This duty places the responsibility of reducing serious violence on local authorities, working in partnership within the statutory, voluntary and community sector. The aim being for the partnership to embed serious violence reduction into their existing work, so that it becomes business as usual.
The Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner receive funding from the Home Office to provide 20 county-wide Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) in areas identified as having high instances of violent crime.
Hampshire is one of the county’s which receives this funding. The aim of VRUs was to bring together police, local government, health providers, community leaders and other organisations to address violent crime. They would do this by trying to understand the causes and providing a response in a coordinated way.
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