Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent discussions she has had with local authorities on planning to prevent terrorist acts in their communities.

We work in partnership with local authorities to build resilience in communities, to tackle the influences of radicalisation, and respond to the ideological challenge of terrorism.

We work to protect all communities and help them to prevent terrorist attacks. Following recent incidents, particularly Finsbury Park, the police have been engaging with their local faith communities to provide advice and reassurance and have reviewed their policing plans.

Under the Government’s counter terrorism strategy CONTEST, work takes place to improve protective security and preparedness at crowded places by ensuring businesses and local authorities have access to high quality protective security advice. Advice for businesses is provided by the National Counter Terrorism Security Office (NaCTSO), and the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI).

NaCTSO have published sector specific protective security advice and guidance for owners and operators of crowded places sites including places of worship, to allow them to identify key risks and consider what steps to take. The advice and guidance is provided independent of threat level, and is designed to be appropriate and proportionate, and wherever possible cost-effective.