Agenda item

The Select Committee will review how the Council and Partner organisations are working together to prevent violence against women and girls. 

Contributors:

Cllr Steve Bowles, Cabinet Member for Communities

Gideon Springer, Head of Community Safety

The Chairman welcomed Gideon Springer, Head of Community Safety to the meeting.

The Chairman explained that at Council in November, Members took part in White Ribbon Day, with several Members signing up to become Domestic Abuse Champions. The programme involved two days of training to learn how best to support victims.

During the presentation, the following key points were raised:

·       Training courses for Members wishing to become domestic abuse champions are run throughout the year. Since White Ribbon Day, 33 Councillors and 160 other partners had signed up to the programme. Members interested in the programme were advised to contact Faye Blunstone.

·       The Council was part of the Domestic Abuse Partnership Board and a subgroup had been set up to focus specifically on violence against women and girls (VAWG), which worked with key partners to positively impact womens’ safety. The group had four objectives:

- Early intervention and prevention focussed on several issues including domestic abuse, stalking and female genital mutilation.

- Supporting victims, through statutory and non-statutory organisations and the voluntary sector. Further information can be found on the new domestic abuse website, which also included support for women who were victims of violence in other environments.

- Pursuing perpetrators in partnership with the police.

- Strengthening the partnership response: identifying pathways for victims to come forward. Violence against women and girls was significantly underreported. Much of this objective focussed around communicating with victims to ensure they receive support through judicial and non-judicial interventions by the police.

The following points were noted during the Committee’s discussion:

·       The Chairman thanked Mr Springer for his work on the subject and highlighted the importance of communicating the issue to the public, for example through distributing posters outlining ways that individuals could get support.

·       Cllr Stuchbury posed the following question which included national figures from the Office of National Statistics: According to recent ONS statistics, in the year ending June 2022, 194,683 sexual offences were reported to the Police nationally but just 4,466 rape cases were referred to the CPS. Of these, referrals, charges were brought in 2385 cases. While this was a slight increase on the previous year, it falls short of the 3,671 cases in which charges were brought in 2016.

In the year to June 2022, there were 1,765 convictions for rape, compared to 2,991 convictions in 2016.

Have we got any comparable data for Buckinghamshire or the wider Thames Valley area? I think it is important to understand a baseline of data so that we can see how partnership working to prevent violence against women and girls translates into reporting of offences and subsequent prosecution and conviction of perpetrators, so that we can give more confidence to individuals in disclosing traumatic events that have happened to them.

·        In response, Mr Springer emphasised that the ONS data only included reported incidents and it was important to note that rape and sexual assault against females were significantly underreported crimes. The Council’s aim was to increase the reporting of offenses, as well as reducing the occurrence of incidents. Within Buckinghamshire, there were 894 sexual offenses reported in 2021, 1,149 in 2022 and 1,100 in 2023 so far. It was difficult to compare this data to the national figures, as the police recorded offenses per thousand population. The majority of those offenses were committed by men, thus efforts should be made to educate children, young men and families on how they could support this issue. In 2021, 27 rape crimes within Buckinghamshire resulted in formal action. There were many complex reasons behind the low number, some of which related to the law and current Crown Prosecution Service backlogs. Mr Springer recognised the need to improve these figures and noted that there were also targets set by the government to improve the figures.

·       A Member asked whether the Council was satisfied with the response provided by the police, highlighting the issue of staff turnover. It was noted that the police forces across the country were recruiting additional staff, with Thames Valley, in particular, experiencing a significant uplift. Front line officers were often the most inexperienced. Training programmes were in place, though gathering experiences would require some time. However, the issue extended beyond the police, with key partners in the community all playing a significant part in mitigating the issue. Work needed to be done in terms of changing attitudes around violence, which relied on parents, the education system and men collectively to discuss the issue of female safety.

·       It was suggested that posters outlining options for support for victims of violence should be provided to different establishments. Cllr Bowles welcomed the idea and noted that the ‘Ask Angela’ scheme was still being promoted to hospitality venues by community safety officers, street wardens and neighbourhood policing teams. However, mail drops were not identified as the most effective method to raise awareness for the scheme, with training and discussion yielding better results. Work was also being undertaken with key partners to raise awareness. The Council was also working on developing effective awareness-raising campaigns, and any suggestions were welcome.

·       The importance of ensuring that younger people were sufficiently educated around violence against women and girls was highlighted. It was noted that most schools had included PSHE (Personal, Social & Health Education) in their curriculum, where children were taught about appropriate relationships. The Council’s education department also had a number of staff in safeguarding who visited schools to inform pupils around safety on the internet. There was also a safeguarding lead in every school to deal with issues of this nature.

·       A third-party community-led organisation provided a sexual assault service in Buckinghamshire for victims, which would support individuals even if they didn’t wish to report the crime to the police. Information about these organisations was available on the Council’s website.

·       A Member highlighted the importance of providing support for members of the LGBT+ community. It was noted that a third of reported incidents in Bucks had male victims, and the new domestic abuse service included support for men as well as members of the LGBT+ community.

·       A Member asked whether any work had been undertaken around creating positive role models against violence, such as the ‘Lads need Dads’ charity. Mr Springer advised that the onus to educate children around appropriate behaviour was on parents. Many incidents committed in school and similar environments were committed by young people who had not received sufficient education about appropriate sexual behaviour.

·       In response to a Member’s question, it was noted that one of the sub groups focused on stalking, and aimed to support victims to come forward. There had been a significant increase in incidents, particularly due to the rise of digital communication. Whilst the Council was working closely with the police on this issue, there was currently no statutory resource to address the issue effectively. Work was particularly focused around prevention, though more needed to be done to increase people’s confidence to report incidents.

The Chairman thanked Cllr Bowles and Mr Springer for their work on the topic, and reiterated the importance of prevention, early intervention and education on what constitutes acceptable behaviour.