Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, on what basis the (a) number and (b) location of the Serious Violence Reduction Orders pilot police areas were chosen.

Serious Violence Reduction Orders (SVROs) are a new civil order being piloted in four police forces: Thames Valley, Merseyside, Sussex, and West Midlands. The orders provide the police the powers to stop and search convicted knife offenders.

These four forces have been selected as they have the required volume of knife crime or offensive weapons offenders per force as well as a wide range of demographics to test the impact and effectiveness of the orders. Piloting in these four forces also allows for the effectiveness of SVROs to be tested in both urban and semi-urban forces.

SVROs are being robustly evaluated by our independent evaluator, Ecorys. Following the conclusion of the pilot we will lay a report in Parliament on the operation of the pilot, which will include full details on the number of SVROs issued and the related stop and search and arrest data.

In addition, the Home Office has expanded its 2023/24 stop and search data collection to capture information on searches which have taken place under a Serious Violence Reduction Order. These data will be available at Police Force Area level and are likely to be published at the end of 2024.