Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department is taking to tackle violence and sexual offences in Preston.

As part of steps taken through our Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy and Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan, we are tackling perpetrators and supporting victims.

We have provided funding to the Lancashire PCC to roll out the Drive Project, which focuses on the most serious domestic abuse offenders to prevent them from abusing again, and funded Preston based Saraha to provide bilingual, comprehensive, face-to-face support service for women from black and minority ethnic backgrounds who are victims of domestic abuse.

Nationally, we have invested £9.4 million to develop a New Operation Model for the investigation of rape through Operation Soteria. This ensures investigations are suspect based. All police forces in England and Wales are now implementing this new approach to rape investigations and we have provided £8.5m in 2023/24 to continue to support policing to improve their response to rape.

Through the Safer Streets and Safety of Women at Night Funds, we have invested over £150 million to deliver interventions to tackle violence against women, anti-social behaviour and neighbourhood crime.

This includes just over £3.4m for Lancashire, of which £146,568 has been awarded to Preston City Council to fund interventions such as the installation of CCTV, the deployment of taxi stewards and night-time economy sector training, along with improvements to accommodation for services assisting women at risk and recovery services for victims of sexual violence.

Since 2019, the Home Office has provided over £8m for a Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) in Lancashire. VRUs bring together local partners to understand and tackle the drivers of serious violence in their area, including sexual abuse and domestic abuse.