Councillor Haydon (Cabinet Member for Community Safety, Libraries, Events, Cemeteries and Crematoria) introduced the report and highlighted the following points:

a)     In January 2023 the Government announced a new duty that required local areas to work in partnership to prevent and reduce serious violence;

b)    Plymouth had been awarded £125,000 in funding from the Home Office which had been shared across several projects and interventions;

c)     The Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (OPCC) had played a role in delivering the Duty;

d)    Reports would be sent to the OPCC quarterly in line with the national measures which were as follows:

i) To see a reduction in hospital admissions for assaults with knives or sharpened objects;

ii) Reduction in crime type recorded by the police and;

iii) Reduction in homicides recorded by the Police;

e)     Plymouth had agreed several additional local indicators:

i) Improvement of the feeling of safety;

ii) Reduction in recording of violent crimes;

iii) Reduction in the number of children entering the criminal justice system;

iv) Reduction in the reoffending of violent crimes;

v) Reduction of the number of children excluded from school, and;

vi) Reduction in the number of 16 and 17 year olds not in education, employment or training.

Tracey Naismith (Head of Community Safety) added:

f)      The Government had identified the police, the National Probation Service and the Fire and Rescue and Health Authority as five authorities who had a legal duty to deliver the Duty Action Plan. The Government also recognised the importance of education, institutions, prison and youth custodial establishments and communities in the voluntary sector;

g)     Plymouth adopted a public health approach which had helped highlight determinants that could cause serious violence;

h)    A Strategic Needs Assessment was published and had used data from various sources. It has highlighted that certain communities felt more impacted by violence than others;

i)      The underlying message was that violence was preventable and everybody had a role in doing so;

j)      There was an emphasis on putting a trauma responsive approach into practice, and on sharing the responsibility for supporting victims and those who caused harm;

k)     The Purple Flag accreditation ensured the city were working together to keep people safe in the night-time economy;

l)      ‘MAN Culture’ was made up of a group of men from a number of organisations who created the Male Allyship Network who recognised that the voice of men was needed to prevent violence against women and girls;

m)   Pathfinder had been working with young people who were violent, offering them interventions to help prevent them stepping into the criminal sphere;

n)    The NSPCC and partners including Plymouth City Council (PCC) had been looking for evidence and local understanding into how they could work with those who had harmful thoughts around children and whether the city was ready for that approach.

In response to questions, it was explained:

o)    The Community Safety Partnership would run a series of Management of Risk in Law Enforcement (MoRILE) workshops;

p)    The speech and language element of the Duty had been dropped due to there not being access to personnel to deliver the work;

q)    A speech and language therapist was embedded into the Impact programme at Plymouth Criminal Youth Justice;

r)     Only 70 cities in the UK and Ireland had received Purple Flag accreditation;

s)     The Purple Flag accreditation bought partners together such as Best Bar None, Pub Watch and the Street Pastors and Taxi Marshalls;

t)     There had been a delay in receiving the funding;

u)    A letter would be written to the OPCC to express the importance of releasing funding on time to ensure projects were correctly funded;

v)     Diverse communities were being represented through various partners;

w)   The Strategic Needs Assessment had comparators to similar family groups to give context to the data found in Plymouth;

x)    The number of reports of crime had increased, but this was due to the advertisement of how people can report in different ways;

y)     There would potentially be a spike in report of violence against women and girls as it had been highlighted on the national news;

z)     Hate crime was still vastly under reported;

aa)  An analyst from Devon and Cornwall Police would attend the MoRILE workshops to explain any spikes in the data.

The Committee agreed to the following recommendations:

1.     That the Committee endorse the Reduction of Violence Action Plan, and;

2.     The Committee would write a letter to the Police and Crime Commissioner asking that funding that was distributed through their office was passed onto authorities as soon as possible and prior to the project start dated in future to reduce delays to projects, following a delay for the Reducing Serious Violence Plymouth Project.