Consultation outcome

Consultation document (accessible)

Updated 23 December 2022

Applies to England and Wales

About this consultation

To:

1. Specified authorities defined in section 11 of, and Schedule 1 to, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022: Chief Officers of police, fire and rescue authorities, Clinical Commissioning Groups, Local Health Boards, local authorities, youth offending teams and probation services,
2. Educational, prison and youth custody authorities as defined in section 12 of, and Schedule 2 to, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022.
3. Local policing bodies.
4. Welsh Ministers
5. Voluntary and community sector
6. Public

Duration:

From 9 June to 21 July 2022

Enquiries (including requests for the paper in an alternative format) to:

Serious Violence Duty Consultation Enquires
Home Office, Serious Violence Unit
5th Floor, Fry Building
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF

Email: svdutyconsultation@homeoffice.gov.uk

How to respond:

Please send your response by 21 July to:

Email: svdutyconsultation@homeoffice.gov.uk

Alternatively, you may post your response to:

Serious Violence Duty Consultation Response
Home Office, Serious Violence Unit
5th Floor, Fry Building
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF

Response paper:

A response to this consultation exercise will be published by the Home Office on GOV.UK.

Ministerial foreword

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 makes vital provision through the Serious Violence Duty to ensure that the right authorities and organisations work collaboratively, share data and information, and put in place plans to prevent and reduce serious violence. We are committed to reducing serious violence and putting an end to the tragedies afflicting our communities. It is very important we work together, across government, statutory, private, and voluntary sectors to deliver this crucial change.

Tackling serious violence is a top priority for the Home Office. In 2018, the government published its Serious Violence Strategy which clearly sets out the government’s aim to do all that it can to prevent serious violence. The government has made £130m available this financial year (22/23) to tackle serious violence, including murder and knife crime. This includes £64m for Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) which bring together local partners to tackle the drivers of violence in their area. VRUs are delivering a range of early intervention and prevention programmes to divert people away from a life of crime. They have reached over 260,000 vulnerable young people in the last year alone.

In this consultation I welcome your views on the revised draft statutory guidance on the duty.

I very much hope you respond to this consultation. Your views will help determine both the contents of the final statutory guidance and the direction of support for implementation.

Kit Malthouse

Minister of State for Crime, Policing and Probation

Serious Violence Duty Background

In response to a government consultation in 2019 on a new legal duty to support a multi-agency approach to preventing and tackling serious violence, there was an overall consensus for a legislative approach to a duty. As a result, the Serious Violence Duty (‘the duty’) was legislated for as part of the Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Act 2022 (‘the PCSC Act’) and is a key part of the government’s commitment to reduce and prevent serious violence.

The duty covers the requirements set out in chapter 1 of part 2 of the PCSC Act 2022; where it requires specified authorities, the police, local authorities, fire and rescue authorities, youth offending teams, Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs)^{[footnote 1]} in England, Local Health Boards in Wales and probation services, to work together to formulate an evidence-based analysis of serious violence in a local area and then formulate and implement a strategy detailing how they will respond to those issues.

This consultation seeks views on the draft statutory guidance on the Serious Violence Duty which will be issued by the Secretary of State under section 19 of the PCSC Act 2022. The aim of the guidance is to support specified authorities, local policing bodies, educational, prison and youth custody authorities, any persons prescribed by the Secretary of State in regulations under section 10 of the PCSC Act 2022 in the exercise of their functions under the duty as set out in Chapter 1 of Part 2 of the act.

The consultation is aimed at those with expertise in working with young people at risk of criminal involvement and/or re-offending or victimisation, those involved in law enforcement and, more generally, the communities affected by serious violence including the voluntary and community sector. This includes relevant professionals, such as those working in social care, education, law enforcement, local government, community safety, youth services, offender management, victims’ services, public health and healthcare.

The geographical scope of the consultation is England and Wales.

The Impact Assessment for the Serious Violence Duty was published here. and an Equalities Impact Assessment for the Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Bill was published here.

Proposals for implementation of the Serious Violence Duty

We aim to publish the final statutory guidance before planned commencement of the Serious Violence Duty early in 2023 so partners are sufficiently prepared for implementation. In advance of the indicated commencement, secondary legislation will be brought forward to make further provision for or in connection with the publication and dissemination of strategies and conferring functions on local policing bodies. The outline policy for the secondary legislation is included in the draft statutory guidance in chapters 2 and 3.

A draft of the statutory guidance was published on 13 May 2021. This was to inform the discussions during the passage of the bill. Since its publication, we have received comments from a range of stakeholders as well as during the debates in both Houses of Parliament. We committed to further develop the guidance in relation to safeguarding and add new content on housing and homelessness. The draft guidance now includes guidance to reflect the application of the duty in Wales.

The revised draft guidance also takes into consideration the following amendments made during the parliamentary passage of the PCSC Act:

Making clear that the definition of violence for the purpose of the duty includes domestic abuse and sexual violence.

Excluding patient information (as defined in section 10 of the PCSC Act 2022) from the scope of the data sharing provisions provided for in respect of the Duty. In addition, health or social care authorities (as defined in section 10) cannot share personal information (as defined in section 10) under the data sharing provisions in respect of the Duty.

Restricting data requests from local policing bodies (PCCs, and in London the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime and the Common Council of the City of London as police authority) to information already held by an authority to whom the request is made.

That the Secretary of State lays a copy of the statutory guidance for the Serious Violence Duty in Parliament.

Clarifying on the face of the legislation that specified authorities must publish a strategy and that regulations will provide further detail about the publication or dissemination of a strategy.

Once the Serious Violence Duty and associated secondary legislation has been commenced, local partnerships will be required to work towards publication and dissemination of their strategies.

We propose that local partnerships should publish their first strategy within 12 months of the duty’s commencement. Specified authorities will be required to publish their first serious violence strategy and any subsequent reviews on a public facing website for public inspection. We also intend that specified authorities will disseminate progress on the strategy through their individual agency and partnership annual reporting processes as well as the outcome of any subsequent reviews.

A revised version of the guidance is available on the Serious Violence Duty consultation webpage.

We are seeking feedback on the statutory guidance as well as additional case studies to support further learning. You can either complete the on-line survey or use the proforma provided in the consultation document pdf to inform your responses.

Contact details and how to respond

Please send your response by 21 July 2022 to:

Email: svdutyconsultation@homeoffice.gov.uk

Alternatively, you may post your response to:

Serious Violence Duty Consultation Response
Home Office, Serious Violence Unit
5th Floor, Fry Building
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF

Complaints or comments

If you have any complaints or comments about the consultation process you should contact the Home Office at the above address.

Extra copies

Further paper copies of this consultation can be obtained from this address and it is also available online.

Alternative format versions of this publication can be requested from: svdutyconsultation@homeoffice.gov.uk

Publication of response

A paper summarising the responses to this consultation will be published on GOV.UK. The response paper will be available online](/government/admin/consultations/1330028).

Representative groups

Representative groups are asked to give a summary of the people and organisations they represent when they respond.

Confidentiality

Information provided in response to this consultation, including personal information, may be published or disclosed in accordance with the access to information regimes (these are primarily the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA), the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004).

If you want the information that you provide to be treated as confidential, please be aware that, under the FOIA, there is a statutory Code of Practice with which public authorities must comply and which deals, amongst other things, with obligations of confidence. In view of this it would be helpful if you could explain to us why you regard the information you have provided as confidential. If we receive a request for disclosure of the information we will take full account of your explanation, but we cannot give an assurance that confidentiality can be maintained in all circumstances. An automatic confidentiality disclaimer generated by your IT system will not, of itself, be regarded as binding on the Home Office.

The Home Office will process your personal data in accordance with the DPA and in the majority of circumstances, this will mean that your personal data will not be disclosed to third parties.

Consultation principles

The principles that government departments and other public bodies should adopt for engaging stakeholders when developing policy and legislation are set out in the consultation principles.

Annex A – draft statutory guidance on the Serious Violence Duty

Copy available on SV Duty consultation page

Annex B – Impact Assessment

The Impact Assessment for the Serious Violence Duty was published here.

The Equalities Impact Assessment for the Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Bill here.

1. CCGs will be replaced with Integrated Care Boards (ICB) from 1 July 2022 as part of the Health and Social Care Act 2022 ↩