Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to support community-led approaches to crime prevention in the Buckingham and Bletchley constituency.

We have put prevention front and centre of our plans to improve the lives of people across the UK. Nowhere is this more important than in delivery of our mission to make our streets safer, including by halving knife crime and violence against women and children in a decade and tackling anti-social behaviour. Community-led approaches are vital to this work, and we’re committed to developing a whole-system approach which delivers with and for communities.

The Home Office has allocated just under £2 million for Thames Valley Violence Prevention Partnership (VPP) in 2026/27. The VPP brings together local partners, including police, schools, health partners, councils and community groups to understand the drivers of violence locally and take action to prevent it. They are investing in a range of programmes, including Op Deter, a partnership with Youth Justice teams in Buckinghamshire to engage with young people at a teachable moment and provide them with targeted support in custody to divert them from further criminality.

We are taking a whole of society approach to halving knife crime. The ‘Coalition to Tackle Knife Crime,’ set up by the Prime Minister, brings together families with personal experience, community leaders, front-line practitioners, ‘what works’ centres and academics. Regular collaboration with this group is ensuring national policy is grounded in real-world insights and made stronger and more practical as a result. The Coalition’s insights have already shaped the Home Office’s response to child criminal exploitation and contributed significantly to the delivery and success of knife surrender schemes.

Through the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, we are restoring neighbourhood policing. We are putting 13,000 additional policing personnel in neighbourhood roles, who will be embedded in local communities. Every neighbourhood in England and Wales already has named, contactable officers dedicated to tackling and preventing crime and ASB locally. As at 28 February 2026 Thames Valley Police have grown by 85 FTE neighbourhood officers since 31 March 2025.