Violent and Sexual Abuse

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 places a duty upon ‘specified authorities’ in each local government area to work together and plan to prevent and reduce serious violence, including sexual abuse.

The ‘specified’ authorities are:

1. The Police;
2. Probation Services;
3. Youth Offending Teams;
4. Integrated Care Boards;
5. Local authorities.

The core requirements of the duty are:

1. Identifying the kinds of serious violence that occur in the area;
2. Identifying the causes of that violence (so far as it is possible to do so);
3. Preparing and implementing a strategy for preventing and reducing serious violence in the area.

The strategy must be published, kept under review and revised when necessary (at least once per year).

The specified authorities need to decide on the appropriate lead authority, the structure of collaboration for their area and how best to implement the strategy.

Wherever possible, existing local structures and partnerships should be used. Examples of existing partnerships include (but are not limited to):

• Violence Reduction Units (VRU) if present;
• Community Safety Partnership (CSP);
• Health and Wellbeing Board;
• Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA);
• Criminal Justice Boards.

The duty requires the specified authorities to consult other ‘relevant authorities’ in the area as necessary. ‘Relevant authorities’ include education, prison and youth custody.

To complement the overarching Serious Violence Duty, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 has amended the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 to give Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs) an explicit role in evidence-based strategic action on serious violence.

These amendments require CSPs to formulate and implement strategies to prevent people from becoming involved in, and reduce instances of, serious violence in the area.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 includes specific provisions to support partners to share information, intelligence and knowledge to prevent and reduce serious violence:

Section 17 creates a power for local policing bodies (PCCs and equivalents) to request any specified or relevant authority within its police force area to supply it with such information for the purpose of its functions relating to the Serious Violence Duty.

Under Section 16, personal information may be disclosed by specified or relevant authorities (except health or social care authorities, who may only disclose where no restrictions on the sharing of personal information apply). However, there is no legal obligation for any authority to disclose information (either proactively or following a request).

Any sharing of personal information must comply with data protection legislation (most importantly, the Data Protection Act 2018). 

Serious Violence Duty - Preventing and Reducing Serious Violence: Statutory Guidance for Responsible Authorities. 

Public Health England has also produced a useful resource on multi-agency partnership for serious violence prevention.

See: A whole-system multi-agency approach to serious violence prevention.

MAPP is a process through which the police, probation and prison services work with Duty to Cooperate (DTC) partners to manage violent and sexual offenders in order to protect the public from harm.

Duty to Cooperate (DTC) partners include: Youth offending teams (YOT); Department for Work and Pensions (DWP); NHS England; Education, social services and health functions of local authorities; Local housing authorities; Private registered social housing providers; Integrated Care Boards (ICB); NHS Trusts; Providers of electronic monitoring services; Home Office Immigration Enforcement (HOIE) and The Ministry of Defence (MoD). 

The MAPP process can be used to manage any of 4 categories of offenders:

The MAPP process will agree one of 3 levels of risk management, depending on the level of risk and multi-agency co-operation needed:

Example: If a person causing harm is described as a Level 2 Category 1 offender, this would mean they are a registered sex offender whose risk to the public is currently being managed through the active involvement of several agencies and regular MAPPA meetings.

The Level of management is dynamic throughout the period of MAPPA registration. An initial level will be established ahead of an offender’s release from custody and a case can be moved between levels of management as required thereafter.

In order to mitigate the identified risks an offender presents, either the Lead Agency or the MAPP meeting panel will produce a Risk Management Plan (RMP), which will set out the actions to be undertaken by all involved parties. The RMP will be a defensible strategy, including all reasonable and practicable steps to protect the public. This will be documented in the minutes produced from the MAPP meeting, or within the local system used by the Lead Agency for Level 1 cases.

Whenever a concern relates to violent or sexual abuse the Safeguarding Adults Manager and the lead police officer should consider whether the person causing harm poses a risk to the public and, if so whether that risk should be managed through Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA).

Referrals for MAPPA should be made in line with local processes and requirements.

Anyone involved in MAPPA can access full guidance online.

See: Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements.