Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Home Office Introducing Public Health Measures Impact Assessment 2019, published on 4 July 2019, which found that the Cardiff Model for violence reduction would cut the costs of violence by £858 million over 10 years if five per cent of Community Service Partnerships implemented it, what plans they have to extend its use throughout (1) England, and (2) Wales.

The Cardiff Model is a multi-agency approach to violence prevention that relies on the strategic use of information and data from health and law enforcement services to improve policing and community violence prevention initiatives. The Government recognises the benefits of using the Cardiff Model to tackle serious violence and have adopted the approach across a number of policies and projects.

For example, the Serious Violence Duty will commence on the 31^st January 2023 and will be rolled out across England and Wales. Introduced through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, the Serious Violence Duty will require a range of specified authorities, such as the police, local government, youth offending teams, health and probation services, to work collaboratively, sharing data and information to analyse the local problem, and put in place a strategy to prevent and reduce serious violence within their local communities, through existing partnership structures where possible.

The proactive sharing of data between health and law enforcement, as set out in the Cardiff Model, has also been adopted and built upon by our Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) who also seek to incorporate data from wider multi-agency partners to generate new insights into violent crime trends and drivers. As of this financial year, we now have 20 VRUs operating in the 20 police force areas worst affected by serious violence. Effective data sharing is a key priority for VRUs, and the Home Office closely monitors progress against this.

The Government also encourages all Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs) to meet the expectation to work with local hospitals to implement the sharing of appropriate health data to tackle serious violence, as detailed in the 2018 Serious Violence Strategy for England and Wales.