Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what funding is allocated to (a) each Greater Manchester local authority and (b) any other organisation in Manchester city region to tackle child criminal exploitation.

The Home Office does not hold information on funding allocations for tackling child criminal exploitation (CCE) for the Greater Manchester local authorities. However, we do provide national funding to some organisations in Greater Manchester to tackle county lines, CCE and serious violence.

Through our Drug Strategy, we are providing a targeted investment of up to £145m over three years to bolster our County Lines Programme. This includes funding a dedicated county lines taskforce in Greater Manchester Police, as well as funding Catch22 to provide a specialist support and rescue service for under 25’s and their families in Greater Manchester to help them safely reduce and exit their involvement from county lines.

The Home Office has provided £1.3million to fund The Children’s Society to deliver The Prevention Programme between 2023-25. Through the programme, a dedicated Northwest Prevention Officer works to support a range of partners to improve the response to multiple forms of exploitation including CCE in the North West region.

To tackle the drivers of serious violence, the Home Office has also invested over £20m to develop and run the Greater Manchester Violence Reduction Unit (with funding of over £4.38m in 2023-2024). We have also invested over £14.5m into the Grip programme (previously known as Surge) in Greater Manchester between 2019-23 for hotspot policing targeting serious violence, and a further £2.35m has been allocated for Grip in 2023-24.

Furthermore, this financial year (2023-24), the government has made available £1m to the Young Women and Girls’ Fund, with Salford City Local Authority receiving £43,000. This funds a Young Women’s Worker who delivers specialist support and interventions to vulnerable young women and girls who are experiencing, or at risk of experiencing, gang-related exploitation or abuse.