Agenda item

Report of the Assistant Director of People (Communities)

The Committee considered the report of the Assistant Director of People (Communities) updating on the serious violence duty which came into force in January 2023 and required specified authorities to publish a strategy by January 2024, to prevent and reduce serious violence; and which indicated that work in preparing the strategy on Merseyside had been coordinated by the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner.

The report indicated that following public consultation in July 2019, the Government announced that it would introduce legislation relating to a serious violence duty; that this aimed to ensure that relevant services worked together to share information to target interventions, where possible through existing partnership structures, to prevent and reduce serious violence within their local communities; that the Government 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; and that whilst the guidance did not specify a particular partnership to lead, given the categories classed as “Serious Violence” were contained within the Community Safety Strategy, it made sense that the Safer Sefton Together (SST) was the partnership lead body for Sefton.

Appendix 1 to the report provided a timeline of the work undertaken within the last year relating to the readiness assessment, which identified a need to support the relevant authorities across Merseyside to facilitate stronger co-production across existing governance structures; and the consultation exercise undertaken to understand the perception of the problem, causes and consequences.

The draft Serious Violence Strategy document was attached as Appendix 2 to the report.

The report also provided information on the local delivery plan that was more specific for Sefton’s communities; and advised that the first draft of the delivery plan was currently being developed and would be mapped against the high level strategic aims of the strategy but also cross-referenced to the priorities contained within the Safer Sefton Together Strategy 2023-26 and would be reviewed through 2024; but however, there was no additional funding for LA’s to deliver the duty and therefore the delivery plan would reflect the work already underway in preventing and reducing serious violence in our communities.

The report concluded by seeking the views of the Committee on the draft strategy and the local delivery plan.

The report would also be considered by the Overview and Scrutiny Committees (Children’s Services and Safeguarding) and (Adult Social Care and Health).

Members of the Committee asked questions/commented on the following matters:

·       The rationale, at a Merseyside strategic level, that domestic abuse would not form part of the serious violence definition for the purpose of the Duty; and the Home Office view of this decision. It was also noted that this matter could be raised at the Merseyside Police and Crime Panel

·       The draft Strategy was excessively heavy with jargon and could this be amended to benefit the Strategy’s target audience.

·       Reasons for the poor response numbers (only 139 respondents to the universal questionnaires (adult and school)) and which was replicated across the other Merseyside LA’s.

·       The weekly, confidential reports submitted to Members by Merseyside Police indicated that 90-95% of crime was gang/drug related; that particular problems were experienced on Merseyside because of the influx of drugs into the area; yet no additional funding was provided to Merseyside to combat such problems; although it was noted that the Police and Crime Commissioner had made representations to the Home Office about this. 

·       The statistics from Merseyside Police, Emergency Departments, Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service and the North West Ambulance Service were referred to which all recorded a reduction in incidents linked to serious violence from 2021/22 to 2022/23.

·       How targets and outcomes in the draft strategy would be measured and evaluated.

RESOLVED: That