Issue - meetings

Simon Burnett/Steve Martlew

The Partnership considered a report giving an update on the Serious Violence Duty and the impact it would have on the Council and Partners

Following public consultation in July 2019, the Government had announced that it would introduce legislation relating to a serious violence duty. The purpose of this was to ensure that relevant services worked together to share information to target interventions, where possible through existing partnership structures, in order to prevent and reduce serious violence within their local communities. The Government had also announced that it would amend the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 to ensure that serious violence was an explicit priority for Community Safety Partnerships and by making sure they had a strategy in place to explicitly tackle serious violence.

Whilst the guidance did not specify a particular partnership to lead, given the categories classed as “Serious Violence” would be contained with the Community Safety Strategy, it was considered sensible that Safer Sefton Together should be the partnership lead for Sefton. This would be an ideal subject for a small sub-group with the relevant statutory organisations to take responsibility for.

Arising from the discussion it was reported that the Violence Reduction Partnership had already carried out much work in this area and would be a useful contact so that work was not duplicated.

RESOLVED: that the report be noted.