PCD 1537 VRU Additional Borough Support

PCD 1537 VRU Additional Borough Support

The VRU are continuously listening to our partners to understand potential gaps, additional asks and how we can better support local provision, partnership responses to violence and share our learning across London to further understand impact and ‘what works’. Feedback from our local authority partners has highlighted how we can quickly respond to some of these gaps and additional asks. Those being an increased offer of investment support post critical incident to support local immediate response. Additionally, support for resourcing more local evaluation and research into programmes and investment at borough level.  

As part of PCD 1147 there is an approved decision for a critical incident draw down fund up to £750,000 each year for 2023-2024 and 2024-2025, allocating up to £5,000 per critical incidents. The VRU are seeking to increase this individual offer up to £25,000 per critical incident where additional criteria met to better support and enable local response. The overall budget remains the same.  

The VRU Research, Monitoring, Evaluation Learning (RMEL) team is currently developing our online evidence hub, designed to share learning and best practice in the violence reduction field. The VRU would like to further develop this function locally by supporting local authorities to fund evaluation and research of violence reduction and prevention interventions, offering grant funding of £5,000- £50,000 between 2023-2025 with an overall budget of up to £500,000. 

The Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime is recommended to:   

1. Approve continuation of critical incident grant funding to local authorities with increased individual grant offer up to £25,000 per application; where criteria are met.  

2. Approve allocation of up to £250,000 in 2023-2024 and £250,000 in 2024-2025 from Core Home Office Funding for local authority evaluation and research projects, with individual direct grant funding up to £50,000 per borough based on an application process.  

3. To delegate the grant award decisions for both programmes to the Director of the VRU 

PART I - NON-CONFIDENTIAL FACTS AND ADVICE TO THE DMPC 

1. Introduction and background  

1. The VRU are continuously listening to our partners to understand the local need and how we can better support our partners in both the short term via immediate response as well as longer-term planned developments to better enable violence reduction and prevention.  

2. Ongoing discussions with partners help us understand potential gaps, additional asks and how we can better support local provision, partnership responses to violence and share our learning across London to further understand impact and ‘what works’. Feedback from our local authority partners has highlighted how we can quickly respond to some of these gaps and additional asks. The below details our response to two of those asks: 

• Critical Incident Funding: Increased offer of investment support post critical incident to support local immediate response. 

• Local Evaluation and Research: Support for resourcing more local evaluation and research into programmes and investment at borough level.  

3. As part of PCD 1147 there is an approved decision for a critical incident draw down fund up to £750,000 each year for 2023-2024 and 2024-2025, allocating up to £5,000 per critical incidents, allocated via approved referral forms to the VRU. The fund allows Local Authorities to bid for up to £5,000 following a critical incident, to support borough response. The fund has been well utilised over the past financial year, including 23 applications for first 6months of 2023-2024, to provide additional outreach and mentoring, therapeutic support for victims' families and community engagement and reassurance, CCTV in the location/hot spots and additional local visibility at high peak times during out of hours.  

4. The VRU are seeking to increase this individual offer up to £25,000 per critical incident where additional criteria are met. That additional criteria will include: 

• Applications over £5,000 and up to £25,000 will be considered where a homicide has taken place whereby the victim is 25 years and under. 

• Follow up feedback on how the funds have been used is currently set at 6 weeks. Over £5,000 allocations would also require additional follow up feedback at 6 weeks as well as at 6 months.  

• Applications over £5,000 will require additional local partnership sign off.  

5. The VRU Research, Monitoring, Evaluation Learning (RMEL) team is currently developing our online evidence hub, designed to share learning and best practice in the violence reduction field. The VRU would like to further develop this function locally by supporting local authorities to fund evaluation and research of violence reduction and prevention interventions, offering grant funding for £5,000- £50,000 between 2023-2025 with an overall budget of up to £500,000.   

6. We hope to be able to increase our volume of learning around ‘what works’ in this field to help better target not only VRU investments in the future but also show guidance and advice to boroughs on their local investments. There will be set criteria for this application process (which we will keep as light touch as possible) to support the VRU to respond to any expression of interests in a proportionate manner. Those will include: 

• Must be related to violence prevention and reduction 

• Has clear, evidence-based aims and objectives 

• Focuses on an area with a currently limited or emerging evidence base 

2. Issues for consideration  

1. Critical Incident Fund: 

PCD 1147 approved up to £750,000 per year in 2023-24 and 2024-25 for Critical Incident Fund (CIF). There is a high chance the budget will be spent quicker once we offer higher CIF to boroughs to support homicide response. This is something the VRU will need to monitor quarterly to assess need and resource. Additional to the CIF, the VRU also offer pre-emptive CIF (20 applications in first 6 months of 2023-2024) utilising this budget, up to £5,000 per application to support reduce tensions and help prevent violence and critical incidents.  

2.2 The VRU will look to assess impact of this increase in offer of CIF by introducing additional returns from boroughs at three and six month post investment periods, proportionate to the grant offer.  

2. Evaluation and Research: 

As part of PCD 1147 there had already been an allocation of up to £350,000 per year for spend on RMEL business. The overall budget is therefore already found however there is not enough budget for every borough to apply and receive a grant funding offer therefore it will be based on set criteria above. 

2.4 The grant application process will be designed to ensure that there is no duplication across the strands of MOPAC, VRU or other (e.g., YEF) funded research & evaluation workstreams, complementing existing focus to develop learning and evidence where gaps exist. 

3. Financial Comments  

1. Critical Incident Funding: There is no change in total recommended budget for 2023-24 and 2024-25 since PCD 1147 was approved and consequently there are no funding implications. 

2. Local Evaluation and Research: PCD 1147 included approval of £150,000 for research and £200,000 for evaluation per annum for 2023-24 and 2024-25 from Mayoral Core funding. A reallocation of funding up to £250,000 in 2023-24 and 2024-25 is being recommended utilising Home Office Core funding. There is no change in total evaluation and research budgets as a result of this funding reallocation recommendation.  

4. Legal Comments 

1. MOPAC’s general powers are set out in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 (the 2011 Act). Section 3(6) of the 2011 Act provides that MOPAC must “secure the maintenance of the metropolitan police service and secure that the metropolitan police service is efficient and effective.” Under Schedule 3, paragraph 7 MOPAC has wide incidental powers to “do anything which is calculated to facilitate, or is conducive or incidental to, the exercise of the functions of the Office.” Paragraph 7(2) (a) provides that this includes entering into contracts and other agreements.  

2. Paragraph 4.8 of the MOPAC Scheme of Delegation and Consent provides that the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime (DMPC) has delegated authority to approve all bids for grant funding.  

3. Legal advice has not been sought and there should be no significant legal implications arising from this report. 

5. Commercial Issues  

1. The VRU is seeking approval to allocate funds for the following projects: 

1. Evaluation and research of violence reduction and prevention interventions:  

The VRU will give the opportunity for all Local Authorities to conduct their own evaluation or research. The allocation of funds across the boroughs will be determined following a grant competition. The application will include a set of criteria which all LAs will be assessed against. All LAs are expected to adhere to the Public Contract Regulations 2015 if they wish to use the grant to procure evaluation and research services. This is clearly communicated in the Grant Agreement. 

2. Critical Incident Fund: 

The VRU will increase the maximum Critical Incident Fund to £25,000. The VRU currently assess all application forms received by LA’s on an ad hoc basis, applications are assessed against the following: 

• Proposals a received within 4 weeks of the incident to ensure the response is most effective 

• The LA’s request is in response to a homicide, or in exceptional circumstances for other critical incidents involving violence. 

• A reasonable breakdown of spend 

Additional criteria set out in paragraph 1.4 of this decision will apply for all claims over £5,000. 

2. The evaluation and research programme will have a maximum of 2 rounds with the first round with the first round in 2023-2024 and the second round in 2024-2025 

6. Public Health Approach  

6.1 As part of the public health approach we know that an evidence led approach is important. The VRU undertakes a significant programme of evaluation and research, and this additional local evaluation will help build upon the evidence base. The VRU supports 32 London boroughs in sharing promising practice, delivering learning hubs and peer reviews.  

7. GDPR and Data Privacy  

1. MOPAC will adhere to the Data Protection Act (DPA) 2018 and ensure that any organisations who are commissioned to do work with or on behalf of MOPAC are fully compliant with the policy and understand their GDPR responsibilities.   

8. Equality Comments  

1. MOPAC, including the VRU, is required to comply with the public sector equality duty set out in section 149(1) of the Equality Act 2010. This requires MOPAC to have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations by reference to people with protected characteristics. The protected characteristics are: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation. 

2. The Critical Incident Fund will be offered to all Local Authorities who meet the criteria. This resource is for Local Authorities to determine need and use of this funding, whereby they will be required to demonstrate how this funding will support their local communities and related needs. The VRU will require Local Authorities to think about potential equalities impact upon application to support optimal cultural sensitivity. 

3. All boroughs will be offered the same grant competition opportunity for additional evaluation and research funding. An Equalities Impact Assessment (EIA) would be recommended for any evaluation and research pieces of work at the point of awarding.