Serious Violence Duty

Delivering the serious violence duty in Coventry

Introduction 

Coventry City Council and their partners have a statutory duty to collaborate to reduce serious violence within their area. The Community Safety Partnership, known locally as the Police and Crime Board, already work hard to reduce serious violence. Since 2020 there has been a particular focus on those aged 25 years and under. The new duty requires that, as a partnership, we address the root causes of violence for all and seek to reduce the levels of serious violence over the long term. The new duty comes into effect on 31st January 2024. As part of the Duty, the partners are required to publish a needs assessment, (or a summary) which outlines what the main issues of concern are, as well as plans to tackle those issues locally. 

What is serious violence?

Serious Violence is defined in the legislation and includes offences such as homicide and violence resulting in serious injury. The use of weapons to threaten or cause injury are also classed as serious violence. Serious Violence is often connected with particular activities, for example, drug dealing and criminal exploitation (sometimes to referred to as County Lines).

Who are the partners? 

• Coventry City Council 
• The Youth Justice Service 
• The Probation Service 
• West Midlands Police 
• West Midlands Fire and Rescue Service 
• The Integrated Care Board (ICB)
• Education (schools, colleges, extended learning centres and alternative provision providers)
• Prisons and the secure estate

Alignment with other areas of work 

Serious Violence is not a new problem. Nationally, there has been a steady rise in "knife crime" and this often involves people under 25 years of age. Coventry is not the only City affected by this issue. The new Duty has been introduced as a way of ensuring that partners work together to understand serious violence in their area and plan how to tackle it.

Tackling serious violence presents a complex challenge for agencies. The causes of violence are rarely straightforward. There is much academic research that suggests poverty and deprivation is linked to higher levels of violence. For communities living in areas of high deprivation, this means that they may experience higher levels of violence than people living in more affluent areas. For young people, violence is something they engage in for a period of their life which they "mature" out of. Violence is often connected to traumatic events in a persons life, which has not been addressed and leaves them with anger which may result in violence. In some communities, witnessing violence is commonplace and it becomes normalised, therefore, it goes unchallenged.

Mere deployment of additional police resources within an area does not address the underlying causes of violence; while it may offer short-term respite, the issues tend to resurface once policing resources shift focus. Coventry's partners strongly advocate for violence prevention as the optimal use of our collective resources. Partners, including the police, need to work together so that violence can be dealt when it happens, but, more importantly, before it happens. This is known as a preventative or "public health" approach. The public health approach to tackling violence has been in operation in Coventry since 2020 and over that time, the levels of most serious violence are decreasing. 

Many of the underlying triggers for violence are already under scrutiny through ongoing initiatives within the city. The partners' approach to prevention involves working within our existing frameworks and implementing gradual, sustainable changes aimed at concentrating efforts for long-term impact on violence reduction.

 Relevant strategies already in place are: 

• The Drug and Alcohol Strategy 
• The Early Help Strategy 
• The Youth Justice Plan  
• The Health and Wellbeing Plan 
• The Community Safety Plan 
• Schools Violence Reduction Plan 
• Attendance and Inclusion Policy (operated by individual schools) 
• Child Friendly Coventry Initiative 
• The Domestic Abuse Strategy 
• Coventry Family Valued Approach 
• This area of work is also closely linked with the work of the Children and Adult Safeguarding partnership 
• Modern Slavery operating procedures 

What the data told us 

At the start of 2023, the partnership analysed data as part of a needs assessment to figure out what the main problems were in the city and how to really deal with violence. The needs assessment pointed out a few important things: 

• Find out what things can help prevent violence in different parts of the city, depending on what's needed. 
• Focus on understanding 'hidden harms' that impact kids and families, like problems at home that affect their mental or physical health but nobody outside the family knows about, for example, domestic abuse. 
• Use information better across the partnership to spot people who need help early on, so things don’t get worse. 
• Understand why some people carry weapons in Coventry and try to address this to stop them from picking up weapons in the first place. 
• Team up more with health experts to notice problems early and share worries with other agencies so they can step in sooner. 
• Make good use of information about early help to decide what kinds of services the partners should offer and who they are most suitable for.

Coventry City Council Strategic Needs Assessment - Serious Violence Duty (January 2024)

Background

In response to a government announcement in July 2019, following public consultation, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 introduced the Serious Violence Duty ("the Duty") applicable to specified authorities. The local authority is one of the specified authorities, along with Police, Probation, Fire & Rescue and others. The Duty comes into effect in January 2024.

Coventry City Council must collaborate with the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner and other agencies to reduce serious violence across the city and the wider region. The Police and Crime Commissioner will publish a serious violence strategy in January 2024.

As part of the work to meet the Duty's requirements, Coventry City Council produced a strategic needs assessment. The strategic needs assessment set out:

• The purpose of conducting the needs assessment.
• The methods and data sources used for collecting and analysing information.
• The limitations and challenges of the data and needs assessment.
• The main findings and recommendations based on all the collected data.
• The next steps and follow-up actions.

This document describes, to someone with no knowledge of this area, the purpose of the assessment, what data was used and how it was collected. The key findings and recommendations for our local community safety partnership are also outlined later on in this document.

Purpose of the strategic needs assessment.

The aim of the Strategic Needs Assessment (SNA) was to examine the levels of serious violence in Coventry, as well as some of the underlying causes and how to address them. The SNA mainly focuses on the impact of violence on young people under 25 years of age. The data indicates that this group tends to experience more violence than other age groups. All this information will be used by the West Midlands Violence Reduction Partnership (WMVRP) to produce a regional strategy for tackling serious violence in the West Midlands Police Force Area. The regional strategy can be accessed here: Violence Reduction Partnership - West Midlands Police & Crime Commissioner (westmidlands-pcc.gov.uk)

The methods and data sources used for collecting and analysing information.

There are large amounts of publicly available data from a range of sources on the internet from policing, education, health as well as the office of national statistics. Some data, not in the public domain, but accessible to the community safety partnership through data sharing agreements, was also utilised.

As well collecting and analysing data (for example, police recorded crime), a range of engagement activities were also undertaken including:

• Focus groups
• Surveys
• Interviews

The services that took part are:

• Child and Adult Mental Health Services (CAMHS)
• Community Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV)
• Coventry Youth Justice Team
• Education Service (Coventry City Council)
• Guiding Young Minds (GYM)
• Housing Services (Coventry City Council)
• National Probation Service
• NHS Safeguarding
• Positive Youth Foundation
• Public Health (Coventry City Council)
• Sky Blues in the Community
• St. Giles Trust
• The Horizon Team (Coventry City Council, Children’s Services)
• West Midlands Police, Coventry Local Policing Area
• West Midlands, Violence Reduction Partnership

Data from the following sources was also used in the preparation of the needs assessment:

• Police
• Health, including University Hospital Coventry & Warwickshire
• Education (schools, colleges, and alternative provision)
• Fire & Rescue Service
• The Youth Justice Team
• The City Council (Adult and Children’s Services)
• Data from the charitable and third sector (e.g. St. Giles Trust, Sky Blues in the Community, Guiding Young Minds)

The full SNA is a large document, nearly 200 pages in length and therefore the following is designed to be an easily accessible public-facing document which gives the reader an overview of how the SNA was carried out, the primary areas of concern and recommendations for addressing the issues found.

Main findings and recommendations based on the data

The 2018 Government Serious Violence Strategy was published in response to the rise of certain types of public space violent crimes. The Serious Violence Strategy sets out specific crimes of particular concern, including:

• Homicide
• Violence against the person (including knife crime and gun crime)
• Areas of criminality where serious violence or threat is inherent, such as county lines drug dealing.

The SNA has focussed on these areas. Violence could potentially include such a broad range of incidents, that the SNA had to be kept to three issues listed.

The demographics of Coventry and how this impacts levels of serious violence

• The population in Coventry has increased by 8.9% since the 2011 Census.
• The population in Coventry increased from just under 317,000 in 2011 to around 345,300 in 2021, equating to a change of +8.9%.
• This increase is greater than the change experienced by West Midlands (+6.2%) and England (+6.6%).
• With all other factors staying the same, the increasing population will affect serious violent crime numbers.
• In 2011 the population was 316,960 and in 2021 it was 345,292 giving a change of +8.9% 
• 37% of the population in Coventry are 25 years of age or under.
• 37% of the population in Coventry are 25 years of age or under. However, this varies significantly by ward.
• This age group is a key cohort for serious violence.

Graph showing the percentage of the population aged 25 years or under:

• 34% of the population in Coventry are from a non-white ethnic group.
• 34% of the population in Coventry are from a non-white ethnic group, like the 33% in 2011.
• A 2019 Home Office report found no association between ethnicity and serious violence-related behaviours (for example, carrying weapons).
• A 2019 College of Policing report shows that no relationship exists between ethnicity and weapon carrying but that age and gender (for example, young men, age peaking at 15), along with adverse childhood experiences and low educational attainment, are predictive of weapon carrying and violent crime.

Graph showing the percentage of the population from a non-white ethnic group:

• It is estimated that 19% of the neighbourhoods in Coventry are among the 10% most deprived in the country.
• Coventry has become less deprived between 2015 and 2019. In 2015, Coventry ranked as the 59th most deprived out of the 317 local authorities. In 2019, Coventry ranked as the 81st.
• Deprived areas are more likely to have greater proportions of black and minority ethnic groups and are more likely to suffer from health inequalities. In Coventry, areas such as Foleshill, one of the most deprived neighbourhoods, had a 68% non-White British population.
• There is a correlation between deprivation and crime rates.
• National research shows that there is strong evidence linking deprivation and vulnerability with knife crime and serious violence.
• As part of this SNA, we analysed the correlation between violent crimes recorded by the police and Indices of Multiple Deprivation.

This information shows the partnership that serious violence is more common in places in the city where there are many people under 25 years old, who live in poverty, who had a hard childhood and who have less education. These factors together with other things can make someone more vulnerable to violence. There is also more violence in the City Centre (part of St. Michael's Ward), but this is expected because most of the city's nightlife is there. Alcohol can change how people act and make violence more likely for several reasons (less control, more anger, misunderstanding of social signals for example). But violence can also be random. This is why stopping violence is a hard problem with no simple answer.

Key findings from the engagement activities, including focus groups, interviews, surveys and lived experience voices

Identifying risk factors

• Practitioners were less confident finding the academic risk factors (‘Poor academic performance’ and ‘poor commitment to school’).

Services meeting needs

• 47% of practitioners thought there was a need for access to mental health services.
• 42% of practitioners thought there was a need for evening and weekend service provision.
• 42% of practitioners thought there was a need for alternative school provision.

Barriers to services

• 97% thought services should be open before or after school/college/work.
• 93% thought a short waiting time was important.
• 92% thought face-to-face availability was important.

Joint working

• 88% thought ‘general information sharing from partners about a young person’s vulnerabilities’ was not working well.
• 85% thought ‘information sharing to/from the third sector’ was not working well.

Training needs of practitioners

• 61% had training needs relating to cultural competency.
• 60% had training needs relating to the links between music and violence.
• 60% had training needs relating to the impact of race, gender, and intergenerational trauma on a young person.

The partners and stakeholders in the city have some actions that it plans to work on, as shown in the tables above. Many of the underlying triggers for violence are already under scrutiny through ongoing initiatives within the city. The partners' approach to prevention involves working within our existing frameworks and implementing gradual, sustainable changes aimed at concentrating efforts for long-term impact.

Relevant strategies and groups already in place in the city are:

• The Drug and Alcohol Strategy
• The Early Help Strategy
• The Youth Justice Plan
• The Health and Wellbeing Plan
• The Community Safety Plan
• Schools Violence Reduction Plan
• Attendance and Inclusion Policy (used by individual schools)
• Child Friendly Coventry Initiative
• The Domestic Abuse Strategy
• Coventry Family Valued Approach
• Children and Adult Safeguarding partnership
• Modern Slavery operating procedures

Next steps and follow-up actions

Context

The reasons for serious violence in Coventry are complex and multifaceted. There is a substantial body of academic research about why violence occurs, which helps professionals identify who may be more at risk of violence within the population. The diagram below sets out individual, family and societal factors that help protect people from experiencing violence. They are known as protective factors. As a city, including individuals that make up our local communities, we must all work together to increase these protective factors for all. Over the long term, this will decrease serious violence in the city.

Protective Factors

Peer and social factors

• Possession of affective relationships with those at school
• Commitment to school
• Close relationships with non-deviant peers
• Membership in peer groups that do not condone anti-social behaviour
• Involvement in pro social activities
• Exposure to school climates with positive characteristics

Family factors

• Connectedness to family or other adults
• Ability to discuss problems with parents
• Perceived parental expectations about school performance
• Family use of constructive strategies to cope with problems
• Consistent presence of parent during key part of the day
• Involvement in social activities
• Frequent shared activities with parents

Individual factors

• High educational aspirations
• Positive social orientation
• Popularity acknowledged by peers
• Developed social skills
• Skills for realistic planning
• Religious beliefs
• Intolerant attitude towards deviance
• High IQ
• Academic achievement

Coventry City Council chose to take a public health approach to tackling violence back in 2019 when it took a report to Cabinet detailing plans to tackle youth violence using the approach. The new Duty helps the city to build on work that has already been taking place over the past four years. This work is starting to make an impact, but the public health approach is not a” quick fix.” Over the coming 5 to 10 years the City will continue to focus on the issues identified by the needs assessment which were as follows:

1. Ensure that the different agencies in the city continue to work together to share information, data and intelligence which could find those in need of help as early as possible.
2. Find those who need help or are more likely to need help and offer suitable support/interventions tailored to the needs of the individual and their family/support network.
3. Continue to use the public health approach to tackle serious violence.
4. Use data matching to find groups of people more likely to become involved in violence and engage in preventative work (for example, this may be working with a school or a family hub). This also links to point 2.
5. Review the local response to the 'hidden harms' caused by adverse childhood experiences, such as those affected by violent incidents. A hidden harm is something unseen within the family home by professionals or taking place outside the family home and parents/carers are unaware of the risk posed to their family members.
6. Take account of seasonal variances in incidents. We know that the school summer holidays, for example, are a riskier time for young people.
7. Address knife crime increases. This is not unique to Coventry, but we need to understand the reasons why it happens and young people, are carrying weapons. We will work to find ways to address this.
8. Health services involvement in joined-up serious violence interventions. The nature of health information is that everything stays confidential and therefore, sometimes, this can result in crucial information, which could be shared, not being shared. The multi-agency partnership needs to work together to ensure all the partners are clear on when they can and should share information for the prevention and detection of crime and safeguarding of vulnerable individuals.
9. Address the gaps in the recording of A& E data. Emergency Care Data Set data (run by NHS Digital) holds information about violence, including the location of the assault. University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire require the receptionist to input the extra data. Data inputting is of variable quality and is not a clinical priority, therefore, information is sometimes not recorded.
10. Retain the A&E support service (currently provided by St. Giles Trust). The A&E Support Service in Coventry works with young people who attend hospital (UHCW (University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire)) with violence-related injuries. They work in addition to clinical staff and can offer emotional and practical support in the aftermath of violence.
11. National research shows, “It was more common for children who were cautioned or sentenced for a serious violence offence to have been permanently excluded before their first serious violence offence.” Whilst Coventry has seen the number of permanent exclusions reducing over recent years, schools must remain vigilant that those at risk of exclusion are offered help and support at an early stage. Coventry has a network of family hubs, which offer early help or can support other partners to offer early help. Early Help offers are voluntary and families cannot be compelled to accept support. We must ensure that all partners understand the early help offer and can aid families in engaging with the right help at the right time.
12. Use Early Help data and supporting family's data to help inform the evidence base on serious violence across the partnership. Early Help data was not available to be used as part of this SNA, but the partnership should aim to incorporate it into future analysis.

What we are already doing 

The Partnership has been addressing serious violence since 2020, with city partners working in close collaboration. The introduction of the serious violence duty has formalised existing local efforts. Initially, the focus was on combating violence impacting individuals under 25 years old, a demographic highlighted as particularly vulnerable to and affected by violence according to the needs assessment data. The partnership has broadened its focus and considers all ages affected by serious violence in its day-to-day work.

To tackle this, the City initiated the Horizon team, a multi-disciplinary group involving professionals from diverse backgrounds such as social work, youth work, children & family services, adolescent support, and law enforcement. This collaboration has notably improved risk management for at-risk children, resulting in fewer children entering the youth justice system. The Horizon team operates in close conjunction with Youth Justice and the Multi-agency safeguarding hub. 

Additionally, the City has embraced Trauma-Informed Approaches and Contextual Safeguarding, enabling professionals to better comprehend how trauma influences behaviour and the risks individuals face beyond their homes, including the impact of peer associations. Although measuring the direct impact of this approach is challenging, data suggests a promising trend: a reduction in severe violence affecting individuals under 25. This is evidenced by fewer weapon-related injuries at A&E and a decline in custodial sentences since 2020. 

What works to reduce serious violence? 

The Youth Endowment Fund has produced a toolkit of what works based on the evidence. One intervention we have currently in Coventry (subject to funding) is navigators in Accident and Emergency Departments.  

We have recently seen the introduction of CIRV which is a focused deterrence model. There is robust evidence that this works and CIRV in Coventry is being independently evaluated by academics during the 24 months that the project is running. 

How will we know if we are focused on the right things? 

The partnership is confident that they understand the root causes of violence for individuals and communities in Coventry. They can broadly be categorised into four domains.

To make a difference, the partnership needs to focus on all four areas. Using the table it is easy to see why tackling the issue is complex and needs the involvement of many partners, including the community and the individuals living in the community. Some factors are outside the direct control of the partners and could only be influenced by changes in national policy. 

Coventry works closely with the West Midlands Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner and the Violence Reduction Partnership (VRP). The VRP conducts its own needs assessment for the region.