Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to provide (a) funding and (b) infrastructure support to (i) local and (ii) community projects to tackle (A) knife crime and (B) violence against women and girls.

The Government recognises the important role played by local and community projects in efforts to effectively tackle knife crime and violence against women and girls.

The Government has made £130m available this year alone (22/23) to tackle serious violence, including murder and knife crime. This includes £64m for Violence Reduction Units, which bring together key partners locally to address violence. VRUs take a public health approach to reducing violence, which includes as a central tenet working with and for community.

VRUs deliver a range of interventions that support young people at risk of involvement in serious violence, which requires close work with those local communities affected. Interventions commissioned by the VRU are often co-produced between statutory bodies and community organisations, to ensure shared support for those who need it most.

For example, in Greater Manchester, the VRU commissions hyper-local activity in communities across each of their ten local districts. This includes a pilot conducted in Salford, which identified 27 young people deemed to be at high-risk of becoming involved in violence over the summer holidays. Through a series of diversionary activities in the community, 26 of the 27-strong cohort had now become involved in education, employment or training by September 2021.

Additionally, this Government is determined to deliver on the commitments set out in Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy and the Domestic Abuse Plan. To achieve this, we have allocated £15.5m this financial year to activity to support victims and better establish what works to prevent VAWG. This will be delivered in part via local and/or community projects. We have also allocated £25m to perpetrator programmes and research, and £12m in response to the Rape Review (£5m to Operation Soteria and £7m to enhance the technical capability of police when dealing with Rape and other Serious Sexual Offences.)