Agenda item

Members to receive a report updating on the work of the local Violence Reduction Network.

The Police and Crime Commissioner submitted a report updating on the work of the local Violence Reduction Network (VRN)

The Police and Crime Commissioner commented that the VRN took on a challenging role dealing with long term causes. VRN’s across the country were tackling the same issues and one of the most pressing had centred around concerns of VRNs being funded on an annual basis although they were dealing with long term issues and ongoing projects. Police and Crime Commissioners across the country had been lobbying government to address the disparity of funding and the Police and Crime Commissioner was pleased to confirm that, on 1^st April 2022 Kit Malthouse, the Minister for Crime and Policing had announced a 3 year funding arrangement for the VRN which would see an additional £3.5m investment as well as £1.5m in group funding over the same 3 year period so the force could continue with its evidence informed work and hopefully do more with the funding secured.

Members welcomed the news about funding and recognised the challenge of leading on longer term projects with uncertainty around year on year funding.

Grace Strong, Strategic Director, Violence Reduction Network (VRN) introduced the report and summarised the key elements which included the following points:

·         The VRN Annual report had been produced and was with the Home Officer for comment and would be shared with the panel in due course,

·         Insight into the VRN partnership arrangements, core membership and how it works in partnership.

·         VRN focus was on public based offences which may change in time particularly with the serious violence duty coming in which has now received royal assent.

·         The VRN was strong on community involvement and building in evaluation to demonstrate impact over time.

Attention was drawn to trends in serious violence and a series of graphs based on police recorded crime, showing peaks and troughs that correlated to restrictions and the covid lockdown situation. It was noted there was a slight upward trend over the 3 year period between February 2019 and February 2022. It was advised that the breakdown of offences was more consistent over the last 3 years however some of the increases e.g., Assault Occasioning Actual Bodily Harm (ABH) were in part due to the reclassification exercise of offences from common assault to ABH and also the role of the night-time economy and alcohol related offending. Members noted the October/November 2021 peaks related to a brief increase in reports of needle spiking but those hadn’t been seen since. It was also noted that the Strategic Needs Assessment provided a more detailed analysis of data including deep dives on different cohorts.

Members were updated on the VRN programme 2021/22 noting this was the second year of delivery of the VRN 3-year Response Strategy which took a universal approach and targeted interventions to communities and areas most at risk; focus in the City was on the east, west and central parts whilst in Leicestershire it was the Charnwood area as they had higher rates of serious violence, however monitoring was continuous and increases in areas such as Hinckley and Bosworth were noticed and options being explored to address that.  

Members noted the progress statement at 16 onwards in the report and the work being undertaken around prevention and criminal justice enforcement, as well as the impressive progress of the VRN work locally which included seven new evidence based interventions; a violence intervention project in hospitals for young people; and two new pilots funded in full by the Youth Endowment fund to work in schools with those at risk of exclusion, exploitation or gang involvements.

Members commended the street based mentor project which offered young people emotional and practical support and pathways out of offending/violence.

Members expressed interest in the data gathered noting especially the ambulance data; timelines for peaks in violence; and suggested it would be helpful for Community Safety Partnerships to receive that information too going forward.

Members queried whether the data could be drilled down further to identify alcohol/drugs, intergenerational – family, peer/gang and other elements. It was advised that it was resource intensive to do that as it required manual effort. Data was stored and recorded in different ways, so they needed to be on second track to achieve those things more easily. The VRN was looking to adopt twin track sharing spreadsheets and would look at collaborating systems to talk to each other and enable triangulation of data.

There was a brief discussion on awareness, progression and understanding in terms of neuro diversity and the extent to which the police recognised that in crime in general and also in terms of violence reduction, through recognition of causes and indicators and it was acknowledged that the education and health sectors were leading the way on that, and criminal justice systems still had some way to go in recognising that.

In relation to the serious violence duty, it was noted that VRN were mobilising a serious violence duty offer and developing a readiness tool to provide some structure.

In terms of the challenges around the increase of knife crime and addressing public concern about that the VRN had outcome frameworks in place and were investing in evidence and evaluation to show outcomes and improve communications.

The Chair drew discussions to a close and thanked officers for the report.

RESOLVED:

1.    That the contents of the report be noted.

2.    That the VRN Annual Report be shared with Members of the Panel once finalised.

3.    That a further update on the VRN and its progress be brought to  the December 2022 meeting.