Statutory guidance

Chair and first member of the OWHR Oversight Board appointed

Updated 7 June 2023

Applies to England and Wales

The Home Secretary has approved the appointment of James Vaughan QPM as the first Chair of the new Offensive Weapons Homicide Review Oversight Board. She has also approved the appointment of Dale Simon CBE to be the Oversight Board’s first member.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 introduced a requirement on the police, local authorities and public health bodies in England and Wales to work together to review the circumstances of certain homicides where the victim was aged 18 or over, and the events surrounding their death involved, or were likely to have involved, the use of an offensive weapon.

As set out in the government’s Beating Crime Plan, at the heart of our strategy to reduce homicide, serious violence and neighbourhood crime are targeted interventions to address places, people, and criminal enterprises.

Offensive weapons homicide reviews are being piloted for 18 months from 1 April 2023 in specified areas of London, West Midlands and in South Wales.

Offensive weapons homicide reviews aim to provide a more holistic understanding of certain homicides involving offensive weapons in order to help inform preventative actions to save lives in the future. The purpose will be to identify the lessons to be learnt from a death, to consider whether any action should be taken as a result, and to share the outcomes.

The review process has been designed to ensure that best practice and lessons are taken forward and changes implemented where needed.

To aid in this process, the Oversight Board has been established to monitor and oversee the local implementation of the reviews, to consider whether lessons learned are being acted upon, and to draw together thematic learning at a national level. The Oversight Board is a non-statutory committee which will be composed of experts in safeguarding, preventing homicide and serious violence and public protection.

Further members of the Oversight Board will be appointed in due course.

Appointments and re-appointments are made by the Home Secretary and are regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments. This appointment has been made in line with the Governance Code on Public Appointments.

Biographies

Chair: James Vaughan QPM

James Vaughan spent 30 years as a police officer, serving in three different police forces across the South West and leading Dorset Police as the Chief Constable between 2018 and 2021. He served as an operational detective through the ranks and was the Head of Crime for Wiltshire Police before graduating from the Police Strategic Command Course in 2011. He was a member of the Homicide Working Group and was the national lead for child homicide. He completed a Master’s at the Institute of Criminology, Cambridge and has published his research surrounding infanticide.

James held chief officer roles in Wiltshire, Dorset and Devon and Cornwall Police and led the response to serious and organised crime in the South West. He was responsible for delivering major restructure, transformation and change through ten years of significant police reform and economic restraint.

James was the national lead for Forensics, driving forward a very challenging transformation programme in response to strategic and structural issues including: market sustainability, raising quality standards and meeting digital forensic proliferation.

He was awarded the Queen’s Police Medal in the 2018 New Year’s Honours.

Member: Dale Simon CBE

Dale Simon CBE is a qualified barrister and an equality and diversity specialist who has worked in the criminal justice system for over 30 years. She began her career as a criminal defence barrister in 1986 and then moved into the public sector in 1992 where she held a variety of frontline, operational and strategic roles; specialising in equality and diversity and professional standards including the Head of the Office of Judicial Complaints and the Director of Public Accountability and Inclusion for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

In 2013 Dale was awarded a CBE for services to equality and diversity in recognition of her success in driving the CPS violence against women and girls’ strategy and increasing the diversity and talent pipeline of the CPS.

In 2014 Dale commenced a portfolio career and now runs her own management consultancy company specialising in organisational equality and diversity ‘health checks’, bespoke diversity and inclusion programmes and workplace mediation.  Dale was a Non-Executive Director for the Parole Board where she Chaired the Standards Committee for 6 years, which has responsibility for advising the Parole Board on issues relating to the standard and quality of Parole Board work, and the support and development needs of Parole Board members. She is currently a member of the Board and the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Board sponsor for the Office for Legal Complaints.

Dale is a member of the House of Commons Independent Expert Panel which deals with allegations of sexual misconduct and bullying and harassment against Members of the UK Parliament and appeals from the Committee on Standards. She sits as a panel chair on Nursing and Midwifery Council fitness to practice hearings; and is also a member of the National Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel (NCSPR) which reviews the most serious safeguarding cases to share lessons and improve practice. In this capacity she led the first NCSPR national review into the criminal exploitation of adolescents.