Serious violence strategies

The Serious Violence Duty, introduced in the Police Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, requires specified authorities to build a public health approach to understanding the drivers and impacts of serious violence, with a focus on prevention and early intervention.

The specified authorities that must comply with the Duty are police, justice, fire and rescue, health and local authority organisations.

In collaborating and planning to prevent and reduce serious violence, local areas are encouraged to adopt the World Health Organisation’s definition of a public health approach, which can be summarised as follows:

• focussed on a defined population
• with and for communities
• not constrained by organisational or professional boundaries
• focussed on generating long term as well as short term solutions
• based on data and intelligence to identify the burden on the population, including any inequalities
• rooted in evidence of effectiveness to tackle the problem

In order to prepare and implement this approach, specified authorities are required to collectively develop a strategy which outlines the multi-agency response that they will adopt to prevent and reduce serious violence in the local area.

Below you will find the serious violence strategies for both Cheshire and Merseyside.

These strategies will be reviewed on an annual basis to consider the impact of interventions and solutions, and whether a refresh is needed to address new and emerging crime types.