Saving Lives. Reducing Harm. Protecting the Public.
An Action Plan for Tackling Violence 2008-11 One year on
The vision of the Tackling Violence Action Plan (TVAP) published in February 2008 was to save lives, reduce harm and protect the public to support the delivery of Public Service Agreement (PSA) 23(1): reducing all forms of violence with injury. The TVAP framework focused on seriousness, managing risk and support for victims. It was structured around a series of 51 actions to be delivered over the three years from 2008 to 2011. This report shows the progress over the last year and introduces a new wider commitment to reduce all violence with injury.
Title: Saving Lives. Reducing Harm. Protecting the Public. An Action Plan for Tackling Violence 2008-11 One year on
Author: Home Office
Number of pages: 56
Date published: August 2009
Availability: Download full report 
PDF 1.04Mb
We have now refreshed and widened our commitment under PSA 23(1) to include a reduction in all violence with injury, of which most serious violence is a subset. We will not lose our focus on seriousness and will continue to monitor our progress closely. We will continue to build on the positive work we have done to address public concern over all forms of violence. As part of delivering the PSA, we have refreshed the TVAP and identified five strategic areas supported by 45 actions which will strengthen our delivery.
Executive summary
In 2009/10, we will continue to save lives, reduce harm and deliver better outcomes for victims of violent crime, and prevent violent crime from happening in the first place.
We will continue to deliver our commitment to tackle and reduce the most serious violence on a cross-cutting basis and we will also ensure that our approach will have a positive impact on the incidence of all violence that causes injury. Our priorities will be to:
- work with our delivery partners on the continued delivery of the 51 TVAP actions and to start delivery of the 45 new actions under the refreshed strategic framework
- maintain and strengthen our action programmes for addressing specific types of violent crime and develop new strategies to tackle emerging issues. The TVAP provides the overarching framework for these
- continue to work closely with the thematic leads within the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) violence and public protection portfolio
- continue to work closely with Government Offices to take tackling violence to the front line through effective, practical and achievable local delivery plans and targets for National Indicator 15 (most serious violence) and National Indicator 20 (assault with less serious injury)
- take stock of models and local practice on information/data sharing to develop practical and sustainable proposals for the implementation of this nationally.
We will strengthen existing action programmes and we will continue to reduce violent crimes which cause injury
Action on tackling knives should remain a priority in 2009/10.
We are therefore continuing the Tackling Knives Action Programme (TKAP) for a further year from April 2009. This will include providing almost £5 million of funding to 16 target TKAP force areas. We will also expand the programme to include a wider age range – 13 to 24 (not just 13 to 19). Our objective is to reduce incidents of homicides or serious woundings in this widened age group.
The work in this phase of the programme will be overseen by Chief Constable Keith Bristow, who has taken on the ACPO operational lead role.
Although knives will remain the key focus of this programme, if we are to address the causes of the problem we will also need to focus on tackling gang crime and other Serious Youth Violence.
We will develop new strategies to tackle emerging issues
Tackling Serious Youth Violence is one of the two clear ministerial priorities for 2009/10. The other is developing a comprehensive approach to tackling Violence Against Women and Girls.
Tackling serious youth violence
We will ensure that our Serious Youth Violence strategy builds on best practice developed by the Tackling Gangs Action Programme (TGAP) and the first phase of TKAP and targets the 13 to 24-year-olds most at risk of homicide or serious wounding. Both TGAP and TKAP phase 1 focused on the weapons that blight lives and, coupled with strong enforcement and routes to divert young people away from violence, have delivered sustainable, measurable improvement. Enforcement will continue to be important but we also need to develop a programme of interventions that focus on the young people themselves and the factors that influence them to use these weapons.
In 2009/10, we will build on the successful enforcement activity already started for TKAP and expand our strategy to gangs as well as other forms of Serious Youth Violence. We will support forces in setting up local, focused strategic arrangements with other key delivery partners such as the National Offender Management Service (NOMS), schools, Government Offices for the regions, local authorities, the criminal justice system and the NHS to ensure that all local partners are engaged in driving this forward.
The interventions that police forces put in place will need to take account of the evidence of what works and we will ensure that they are evaluated effectively to assess the impact of activity upon crime and other relevant indicators. We will therefore ensure that Serious Youth Violence is a strategic priority for the Youth Crime Action Plan and the Youth Justice Board, including its knife crime prevention programmes, which will now be delivered by Youth Offending Teams (YOTs) in every TKAP area.
Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls
A cross-government strategy to tackle Violence Against Women and Girls will be published in the autumn of 2009. Our vision is a society where women and girls feel safe and confident in their homes and communities so that they can develop fully, live freely, contribute to society, and prosper in their daily lives. We want to overcome women’s and girls’ fear of crime and the gender-based violence that they experience.
The strategy will build on the largest ever government consultation on this issue. Between March and May 2009:
- the ‘Together We Can End Violence Against Women and Girls’ roadshow bus visited just under 40 towns across England and distributed nearly 20,000 leaflets from which 2,000 surveys were returned
- 700 front-line practitioners and service providers attended the stakeholder events that were arranged for each English region
- over 5,000 online surveys were completed and 4,000 consultation documents downloaded. We received close to 700 emails to the consultation inbox
- the Women’s National Commission facilitated 24 focus groups with victims, including those who are most disadvantaged and marginalised.
Getting a copy
Last update: Wednesday, August 05, 2009