New public health duty to tackle serious violence

Home Secretary Sajid Javid

Home Secretary Sajid Javid has this week announced a new legal duty on public bodies to prevent and tackle serious violence.

The new ‘public health duty’ will cover the police, local councils, local health bodies such as NHS Trusts, education representatives and youth offending services.

It will ensure that relevant services work together to share data, intelligence and knowledge to understand and address the root causes of serious violence including knife crime. It will also allow them to target their interventions to prevent and stop violence altogether.

In addition, the government will amend the Crime and Disorder Act to ensure that serious violence is an explicit priority for Community Safety Partnerships, which include local police, fire and probation services, by making sure they have a strategy in place to tackle violent crime.

This new public health duty has been created taking into account responses from professionals in health, education, police, social services, housing and the voluntary sector after an eight-week public consultation.

The new duty will hold organisations to account as opposed to individual teachers, nurses or other frontline professionals. It does not mean burdening them with police work, but is designed to build on existing responsibilities and local arrangements to protect young people by ensuring they work together.

New guidance will also be published in due course to support the legislation, which will provide examples of different partnership models and explain how different organisations and sectors can partner with each other.

Similar public health approaches have been used in Scotland and Wales, which both bring together every part of the system to support young people and make targeted interventions before they commit violence or are groomed by gangs.

Mr Javid said: “Violent crime is a disease that is plaguing our communities and taking too many young lives.

“It’s crucial that we all work together to understand what causes violent crime in the first place, so we can intervene early and prevent this senseless bloodshed.

“I’m confident that a public health approach and a new legal requirement that make public agencies work together will create real, lasting long-term change.”

Andrea Fallon, Rochdale Borough Council’s director of public health and wellbeing, said: “A public health approach to tackling violent crime is a step in the right direction and this government initiative will build on the effective partnership approach, with a focus on early intervention and prevention, we already have in place across the borough.

“It is vital this new duty is properly resourced so any additional government funding, to help us meet the new requirements, is welcomed.”