What is the Serious Violence Duty
The legislation places a duty on a range of specified authorities as set out in Chapter 1, Part 2 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022.
The duty is to ensure relevant services work together to share information, target interventions and collaboratively prevent and reduce serious violence within local communities.
Section 6 of the Crime and Disorder Act has also been amended to ensure Community Safety Partnerships have the prevention and reduction of serious violence as an explicit priority in their strategies. The duty started on 31 January 2023.
Why it has been introduced
Serious violence has a devastating impact on victims and their families, instils fear within communities and is extremely costly to society. Incidents of serious violence have increased in England and Wales since 2014.
The duty aims to ensure that 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.
Who is responsible for delivering the duty
The Serious Violence Duty Statutory Guidance states that Community Safety Partnerships have accountability for ensuring that a strategy to prevent and reduce serious violence is in place.
Specified authorities have shared accountability for their participation. They are:
- Police
- Probation Service
- Youth Offending Teams
- Fire and Rescue
- Integrated Care Boards (ICBs)
- Local Authority
In addition, local policing bodies (Police and Crime Commissioner) may assist and for the purposes of the Duty, Section 15 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act also provides that educational authorities must collaborate, if their involvement is requested.
Requirements
They are set out in the Serious Violence Duty Statutory Guidance which says local areas are to confirm the partnership arrangements through which they will deliver the Duty.
They are also expected to agree a local definition of serious violence and produce two mandatory products; a strategic needs assessment and a local strategy.
These should be publicly shared and outline plans to prevent and reduce serious violence. The strategy has to be implemented and reviewed on an annual basis.
Measures for the success of this work will include:
- a reduction in hospital admissions for assaults with a knife or sharp object
- a reduction in knife and sharp object enabled serious violence recorded by the police
- homicides recorded by the police
What is happening locally
In February 2024 specified authorities in the area agreed the mandatory needs assessment and strategy would be pan Avon and Somerset.
They also agreed that each local authority in the area will coordinate their own partnership group to produce a local needs assessment and strategy to inform the overarching Avon and Somerset strategy.
In Somerset the local partnership group is called Somerset Violence Reduction Partnership and is part of the Safer Somerset Partnership.
Local areas are encouraged to take a ‘public health approach’, which includes using an evidence base, understanding serious violence and its causes, reducing inequalities, collaborating with communities and partners and to focus on tackling the causes of violence through prevention and early intervention.
What is serious violence
There is no one national definition of serious violence. Our locally agreed approach is that the Avon and Somerset Violence Reduction Partnership embraces a priority focus on the prevention and reduction of public space violence for under 25’s (children and young people); including homicide, attempted homicide, robbery, wounding, grievous bodily harm, knife and gun crime, alcohol and drug related violence and areas of criminality where serious violence or its threat is inherent, such as county lines and modern slavery.
The Avon and Somerset Violence Reduction Partnership also recognise and commit to supporting a joined-up response to existing partnership work to tackle serious violence across the whole pathway and in the broadest sense, including domestic abuse, rape and serious sexual offences and violence against women and girls more generally.
More information
You can contact Somerset Violence Reduction Partnership at CommunitySafetyTeam@somerset.gov.uk.
Contact Avon and Somerset Violence Reduction Partnership
For more information about serious youth violence please visit Serious Youth Violence page.