The Serious Violence Duty Commences on 31st January

  • By Rangan Momen

The Serious Violence Duty, which is encompassed in the Police Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 is part of the Government’s broad approach to prevent and reduce serious violence. The key strands being a multi-agency public health approach to understanding the drivers and impacts of serious violence, and a focus on prevention and early intervention.

The Duty is being introduced in the context of an increase in violence over the last decade and the impacts this has on victims and their families. The guidance to the Serious Violence Duty provides the example of increase in offences involving knives or sharp instruments by 84 percent between the year to June 2014 and the year to June 2020 in England and Wales. The guidance also suggests that the government is aiming to strike a balance between ensuring “agencies are focussed on their activity to reduce serious violence whilst also providing sufficient flexibility so that the relevant organisations will engage and work together in the most effective local partnership for any given area”.

Responsible authorities (also known as “duty holders”) who are subject to the Duty include: local authorities, the police, youth offending teams, Integrated Care System, Probation, and the fire service.

The Serious Violence Duty requires organisations above to work together to share information, analyse the situation locally and come up with solutions, including the publication of an annual strategy to prevent and reduce serious violence on a local basis. The duty also requires the responsible authorities to consult educational, prison and youth custody authorities for the area in the preparation of their serious violence strategy.

In addition to the Serious Violence Duty Section 17 of the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act has been amended to make preventing and reducing Serious Violence a statutory requirement for Community Safety Partnerships (CSP).

The Commencement of the Serious Violence Duty is on 31 of January 2023.

The Serious Violence Duty and London Local Authorities

The Home Office Guidance on the Serious Violence Duty is written from a national perspective and much of the detail is left for “local areas” to determine, which in London’s case means the 32 London Boroughs. This includes agreeing a definition of serious violence, agreeing a local partnership to lead on implementing the Duty and having consistent data sharing and analytical process in place to produce a Strategic Needs Assessment and a Strategy that sets out how the Duty will be implemented locally. This means that without a pan-London approach or a London specific guidance there is scope for a wide variance of partnership arrangements across London.

The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) is not classified as a responsible authority in relation to the Duty, but it is able to use its existing powers to work with partner agencies and to request cooperation. London’s Violence Reduction Unit (VRU), which comes under the jurisdiction of the Mayor of London alongside MOPAC, has developed a London specific Partnership Guidance on the Serious Violence Duty, in consultation with partners, which aims to facilitate consistency in implementing the Duty whilst still enabling CSPs to retain their local community safety priorities. This London Guidance contains definition of terms, suggestions for a common approach as well a template for local strategic assessments and a Duty strategy should boroughs wish to adopt it. There is also an FAQ sheet for borough officers that will be update as details on the implementation of the duty become clearer. Where boroughs have existing strategies and strategic needs assessments that meet the requirements of the Duty, there is no obligation to utilise the template provided by the VRU. The Home Office guidance also states that it is for the Community Safety Partnerships and the Duty holders to satisfy themselves that they have met the Duty requirements. 

Definition of Serious Violence

One of the areas identified that may benefit from a common approach for London is the use of an agreed definition of serious violence. Although the government guidance sets out types of violence that should be included within a definition of serious violence, such as domestic abuse, sexual offences, violence against property and threats of violence there is no actual definition provided. This allows each local area to define serious violence.

The London Guidance (and associated FAQ sheet) advises that Serious Violence for the purposes of the Serious Violence Duty in London, is defined, as minimum standard which boroughs can expand upon, as: 

Any violence and exploitation affecting young people under the age of 25, domestic abuse, and sexual violence. Within the context of these types of violence, it encompasses homicide, grievous bodily harm, actual bodily harm, rape, assault by penetration, sexual assault, personal robbery, threats to kill and violence against property caused during the commission of one of these offences.  

In considering whether to go beyond the minimum standard, boroughs may want to refer to, section 32 and 33 of the National Guidance which state that:

In considering how to define serious violence within their area and taking into account the factors in section 13(6), specified authorities should include a focus on public space youth violence including; homicide, violence against the person which may include both knife crime and gun crime, and areas of criminality where serious violence or its threat is inherent, such as in county lines drug dealing.

However, there is flexibility for specified authorities in local areas to take account of their evidence-based strategic needs assessment when defining serious violence and, taking into account the factors in section 13(6), they can include in their strategy actions which focus on other related types of serious violence, including (but not limited to) alcohol related violence, criminal exploitation, modern slavery, and violence against women and girls, including domestic abuse and sexual offences, and male and LGBTQ+ victims.

Local Partnership Arrangements

Whilst the Duty states that organisation must come together to decide on a structure for collaboration for an area, the nature of the structure or which organisation is to lead is not specified. This may work on a national basis, within police force areas for example, but within London could result in many variations of structure from one borough to another. For example, in some boroughs the lead could be the Health and Wellbeing Board and the Children Safeguarding Partnership or the Community Safety Partnership in others.

As Community Safety Partnerships have all the “duty holder” agencies within their statutory membership and are not limited in remit by age restrictions. And due to the government guidance on using an existing partnership board, rather than creating a new one; the London Strategy recommends that the Community Safety Partnership be the lead partnership body for delivery of The Duty on all 32 London Boroughs.

Violence Reduction Strategies and Strategic Needs Assessment of Violence

Under the new Duty local partnerships will be required to produce an evidence based Strategic Needs Assessment (SNA) to identify current and long-term issues in relation to serious violence and to understand emerging trends. The SNA will require data from a wide range of partners including Health, Educations and Prisons.

The Duty also requires that an annual Serious Violence Strategy be produced by the local partnership which identifies the causes of serious violence in that area and details are range of new and existing actions to prevent and reduce serious violence and it’s drivers that have been identified.

It is worth noting that the National Guidance states that neither of the above products are required to be separate from the existing statutory Community Safety Partnership Strategy and needs assessment if the requirements of the PCSC Act are met.

Serious Violence Duty Funding

The Home Office is providing funding to local policing bodies from now to the financial year ending March 2025 in relation to costs associated with delivering the statutory Duty. The VRU will be distributing this funding to each of the 32 London boroughs. The total amount per borough for this period is just below eighty thousand pounds.

Information Sharing

The National Guidance confirms that the new information sharing powers do not remove existing legal gateways for sharing data and that the new information sharing gateways for the purposes of the Duty are intended to enable the sharing of relevant data where existing powers alone would not be sufficient.

MOPAC’s Powers

The statutory guidance confirms that the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime has the ability to request data (including personal data), convene meetings and monitor the performance of local community safety partnerships. MOPAC are required however to consider proportionality and anticipated costs to partners when doing so and comply with Data Protection Act requirements. 

Commentary

London’s local authorities will be keen to continue to work with police, fire and rescue, criminal justice agencies and health authorities and other agencies, to strengthen (where necessary) coordinated evidence-based approaches to preventing and tackling the problems associated with serious violence as required under the new Serious Violence Duty.

Boroughs may find the London Guidance and Needs Assessment templates being offered by the Violence Reduction Unit useful tools which will build on London’s collaborative approach to tackling violence, whilst noting that these tools simply have the status of guidance rather than a statutory requirement.  

Rangan Momen, Policy and Project Officer | London Councils