Violence Reduction Units: Finance

(asked on 7th July 2021) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what data her Department uses in determining which areas receive funding for Violence Reduction Units.


Answered by
Kit Malthouse Portrait
Kit Malthouse
This question was answered on 15th July 2021

We have invested £105.5m over three years into the Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) programme, establishing and developing 18 VRUs in the areas worst affected by serious violence. The minimum allocation any one VRU receives each financial year is £880,000. VRUs do not operate in a single form, therefore costs associated with their operations vary significantly; however, funding made available through the programme has been sufficient to allow for the establishment and sustainment of a range of VRU operating models.

These 18 areas have been selected for funding based on their volumes of hospital admissions relating to injury with a sharp object, which represents the most consistent and reliable data source for serious violence. Collectively, these areas have accounted for 80% of total relevant admissions, allowing VRU funding to focus on a significant majority of the serious violence problem across England and Wales.

A review of this data informed the most recent decisions about VRU funding made in February 2021. At this point, the available data demonstrated that the Humberside police force area, which includes the constituency of Haltemprice and Howden and county of East Riding of Yorkshire, did not feature in the ranked list of areas experiencing the greatest volume of hospital admissions for injury with a sharp object that collectively accounts for 80% of said admissions (i.e. the top 18 force areas, of which Humberside was not one, collectively accounted for 80% of relevant admissions). On this occasion, Ministers determined not to provide funding from the Serious Violence fund for Humberside.

Future VRU funding for currently eligible and ineligible areas, and any potential allocation models, will be carefully considered in the context of Departmental priorities through the upcoming Spending Review process.

Further information on the levels of police recorded crime within Haltemprice and Howden and/or East Riding of Yorkshire can be found in the Open Data Tables, available here: Police recorded crime and outcomes open data tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). The Home Office collects and publishes this information at the CSP level; information on offences involving firearms or knives are available at the Police Force Area level from the same link.

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