PCD 1644 VRU Growth Funds Delivery 2024-2026

PCD 1644 VRU Growth Funds Delivery 2024-2026

The Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) has received enhanced funding from the Mayor of London. In February 2024, the Mayor announced a £6.5m package of additional funding to strengthen the work of London’s VRU to tackle violence and support our neighbourhoods across London. This decision sets out further programmatic activity and funding recommendations to support the ongoing and widely recognised work of the VRU in reaching children, families, communities and frontline professionals to achieve its core aims of reducing and preventing violence. 

The additional investment included £3m for increased detached outreach to tackle robbery via a programme of street-based youth workers working after school hours to support and divert young people from robbery, exploitation and violence. The remaining 3.4m funding will boost the VRU's MyEnds community-led programmes across all 32 London boroughs, taking the learning and key principles of the MyEnds model to have that same presence in more areas of the city. 

The VRU will create new investments in projects across London to tackle robbery as well as bolster current MyEnds programmes and offer funding across further areas of the city. This decision will therefore incorporate approval budget decisions to cover 2024-2026.  

The Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime is recommended to:   

1. To approve £3.000m for Robbery Response, funded from 2024/25 Mayoral growth precept funding, allocating equal grants for up to 15 identified local authorities for £1.500m in 2024/2025 and £1.500m in 2025/2026.  

2. To approve additional funding of £2.400m towards MyEnds 2.0 rollout to fund three additional locations, funded from £2.200m of 2024/25 Mayoral growth precept funding and £0.200m from VRU reserves.  

3. To approve allocating MyEnds Lite grants of £0.280m to 23 local authorities not funded for a MyEnds 2.0 programme, at a total cost of £6.440m for 2024/25 and 2025/26 funded by £0.600m Mayoral precept growth funding, £0.200m from VRU reserves and £5.640m from previously approved PCD1519 MyEnds and PCD 1157 & PCD 1149 Community Capacity Building 

4. To approve reallocation of PCD1519 MyEnds £0.600m allocation across eligible original MyEnds boroughs. 

5. To approve additional growth of £0.600m allocated and awarded across eligible original MyEnds consortiums for spend in 2024/2025 and 2025/2026.  

6. To approve direct grant award to Enfield and Greenwich local authority for an additional £0.280m (£0.140m each), funded from VRU reserves, across 2024/2025 and 2025/2026.  

7. To approve an additional £0.100m into VRU communications budget for 2024/2025 from Mayor growth precept funding. 

8. To approve an additional £0.044m to a total of £0.132m for expansion of the Community Needs Assessment to three additional MyEnds sites to be delivered by Civil Society Consulting CIC across 2023/2024 and 2024/2025 funded from VRU reserves.  

9. Approve delegating the final contract award decision for the new MyEnds 2.0 programme to the Director of the VRU. 

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

1. Introduction and background  

1.1 The Violence Reduction Unit’s (VRU) budget enables us to fund a range of ambitious and crucial programmes that are designed to improve the environments, relationships, or surrounding professional networks that, if unaddressed and unsupported, may otherwise lead to violence.    

1.2 The VRU’s approach to violence reduction means putting communities, young people and their families at the heart of tackling the issue; and particularly in those parts of London most affected, often taking a place-based approach to violence reduction. This includes work programme interventions to support those neighbourhoods which have experienced sustained and high levels of violence, as well as focusing on individual impact and responses to violence, including robbery.  

1.4 In February 2024, the Mayor announced a £6.5m package of additional funding to strengthen the VRU’s work to tackle violence and support our neighbourhoods across London. 

5.      This additional investment announcement includes: 

1. ROBBERY RESPONSE: Insight from 2023 shows Robbery recorded by the MPS was ranked the highest of all police forces in England & Wales for its rate per 1,000 population and remains a key driver in overall knife crime. It is therefore a big concern for young people and communities. 

2. Investment for increased detached outreach to be put in place to support the reduction in robbery via a programme of street-based youth workers working after school hours to support and divert young people from robbery, exploitation and violence. From evidence, we know that there are specific hours of the day, e.g. after-school, weekends and holidays, when young people are most affected by violence. This often starts with post school “beef” that leads to something more destructive or with robbery, an indicator of future violence.  

3. Additional investment of £3m will fund a programme of street-based youth workers operating after school hours to support and divert young people from robbery. This will support additional localised projects that put communities at the forefront of tackling violence and robbery, including the VRU’s flagship after-school programme, Stronger Futures, investing in making schools safer through London’s Inclusion Charter and localised partnership responses via Community Safety partnership initiatives. 

4. The investment will fund up to 15 boroughs to provide local detached youth work whilst working with their educational settings to identify the most in need after–school areas for intervention and improve young people’s sense of safety and belonging by investing in inclusive practices. This will involve a multi-agency approach. The boroughs will be identified via robbery crime data.  

5. NEIGHBOURHOOD RESPONSE: MyEnds is the VRU’s award-winning community-led programme delivering better outcomes for young people in neighbourhoods across London. An original 8 MyEnds boroughs were funded and delivered community-led work, while an additional MyEnds 2.0 areas are soon to be awarded. 

6. Additional £3.4m investment from the Mayor will boost the MyEnds community-led model to ensure it operates across all 32 London boroughs.  

7. Funding will be delivered in three ways. Firstly, investment in new MyEnds 2.0 areas to be funded. Secondly, it will be used to fund and support the original  MyEnds networks, who are eligible for sustainability funding of up to £150,000 to spend over 2024-2026. Lastly, it will bolster community capacity building funding to support boroughs that currently do not have a MyEnds programme operating (all 23 boroughs). The VRU will create ‘MyEnds Lite’ initiatives of up to £280,000 investment over 2024-2026 in each of these boroughs. This will enable neighbourhood consortiums to be funded following the key principles of the community led MyEnds model.  

8. An additional grant opportunity via the MyEnds Lite programme will be offered to Enfield and Greenwich (see 2.4). 

9. To support the mobilisation and targeting of MyEnds interventions £200,000 was allocated for the commissioning of a Community Needs Assessment (DMPC Decision – PCD 1351). The initial commission was for 6 sites and was awarded to Civil Society Consulting CIC for a total of £88,624. To support delivery across all nine sites this contract will be varied to a total of £132,624. This to be delivered across 2023/2024 and 2024/25.  

2. Issues for consideration  

2.1 Analysis of data has identified a 21% increase in total robbery offences between the periods of February 22 - January 2023 and February 2023 - January 2024 (increase from 28,224 to 34,158 offences). Feedback from boroughs has highlighted ongoing concerns of robbery during the after-school period of 3pm- 6pm and involving young people often in and around schools and in town centre hotspots where young people frequent.  

2.2   The investment will provide additional funding to boroughs where police crime data alongside the utilisation of other data sources including ISTV data will highlight the most in need boroughs, up to 15, where robbery shows to be a concern. This funding will then support and bolster a local partnership response to robbery hotspots and the most in need after-school areas for intervention. This will involve a multi-agency approach across community safety partners, working with local policing interventions and safer school's officers.  

2.3 The VRU’s core mayoral budget for MyEnds 2.0 for FY24/25 and 25/26 allows for funding of six MyEnds 2.0 locations. The rollout to fund three additional locations will enable the MyEnds programme to increase coverage of a community-led approach delivering interventions across nine local authority areas, instead of six.  A proportion of the total allocation for the first year of MyEnds 2.0 will be assigned and evenly distributed into sustainability grants amongst the four commissioned partners from the original iteration who no longer have a MyEnds 2.0 investment in their area. This is to assist partners with sustainability after the decommissioning of the first iteration concluding June 2024. 

2.4 Fifteen boroughs were shortlisted as eligible for MyEnds 2.0 based on an analysis of areas which were consistently rated highly on a range of violence and public health indicators. Thirteen of those boroughs applied for MyEnds 2.0 funding. Of those, nine areas will receive MyEnds 2.0, and two areas will receive sustainability grants. The remaining two areas, Enfield and Greenwich, are the only two eligible areas, that will not receive any MyEnds funding. Therefore, these local authorities will receive an uplift to the MyEnds Lite funding to support the consortiums who had unsuccessful bids.  

5. MyEnds Lite will require the 23 local authorities (who do not have MyEnds 2.0 funding) to work with their local community and voluntary sector to identify local networks to support the prevention and reduction of local violence. Local authorities will be required to submit delivery plans on how they will meet the standards identified via the MyEnds evaluation and learning to create their MyEnds Lite initiatives.  

6. Boroughs will also be able to utilise these additional funds to support the delivery of their serious violence duty strategy and violence and vulnerability reduction action plans.  

7. Due to the additional 3 MyEnds sites, there will need to be a relative uplift for the MyEnds Dynamic Process Evaluation this will be discussed with the provider once appointed.  

3. Financial Comments  

1. Additional Mayoral precept funding of £6.500m was announced in February 2024, allocating £3.000m for Robbery Response, £3.400m to boost the VRU's MyEnds community-led programmes across all London boroughs plus £0.100m additional investment in communications. Table 1 below shows the assumed profile of spend included in the 2024/25 budget and Medium-Term Financial Plan, with £3.600m expenditure assumed in 2024/25, £2.900m to be transferred into reserves in 2024/25, with assumed expenditure of £2.900m in 2025/26.  

2. In addition to the Mayoral growth precept funding of £6.500m, approval is requested to fund £0.724m from the existing VRU budget smoothing reserve, profiled £0.184m in 2024/25 and £0.540m in 2025/26, to support MyEnds 2.0, My Ends Lite, Enfield and Greenwich My Ends Lite and Community Needs assessments as detailed in Table 2 below. 

3. The table below shows the total expenditure and funding across 2024/25 and 2025/26 for the programmes within this decision and includes existing budget assumptions and funding for completeness: 

4. Legal Comments  

4.1 Paragraph 4.8 (8) and 4.13 (1), (2) of the MOPAC Scheme of Delegation and Consent provides that the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime (DMPC) has delegated authority to:  

• Approve bids for grant funding made and all offers made of grant funding; and/or where appropriate a strategy for grant giving.  

• Approve the strategy for the award of individual grants and/ or the award of all individual grants whether to secure or contribute to securing crime reduction in London or for other purposes.  

• The procurement strategy for all revenue and capital contracts of a total value of £500,000 or above, such determination to include decisions on the criteria and methodology to be adopted in the tendering process, any exemptions from procurement requirements, and any necessary contract extensions.  

• All requests to go out to tender for contracts of £500,000 or above, or where there is a particular public interest.  

• Under MOPAC’s Scheme of Delegation the strategy for the award of individual grants and/ or the award of all individual grants is reserved to the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime. This includes the responsibility for signing the grant agreements. 

• Officers must ensure that the arrangements comply with the Financial Regulations and Contract Regulations Officers can confirm that the DMPC has the legal authority to agree this decision. 

5. Commercial Issues  

5.1 MyEnds 2.0 contracts: 

  5.1.1 This decision is seeking approval for additional funding of £2.4m towards MyEnds 2.0 to fund three additional locations, funded from £2.2m of 2023/24 Mayoral growth precept funding and £0.2m of reserves. 

5.1.2 The current competitive tendering process has identified the need to fund additional 3 locations for the value of £2.4m towards the programme.  

5.1.3 A full open tendering procedure has been followed for the MyEnds2.0 programme.  The MyEnds 2.0 Programme is subject to the Public Contract Regulations 2015 (as amended) (“the Regulations”); specifically, those applying to social and other specific services as contained in Regulation 74 of the Regulations, the so called “Light Touch Regime”. 

  5.1.4 The process will comply with the Public Contract and Regulations 2015 (PCR  

  2015), the transparency notice will include all the details of why the additional funding was given to 3 additional locations for the MyEnds2.0, this will reduce the risk of challenge. 

  5.1.5 To approve an additional £0.044m to £0.088m, for the total of £0.132m for expansion of the Community Needs Assessment to three additional MyEnds sites to be delivered by Civil Society Consulting CIC across 2023/2024 and 2024/2025. 

5.1.6 Evidence provided within the report justifies the decision. 

5.1.7 Approve delegating the final contract award decision for the new MyEnds 2.0 programme to the Director of the VRU. 

5.2 Grant programmes: 

5.2.1 As the below are grants and not a contract the Public Contract Regulations 2015 does not apply. The VRU will continue to seek quarterly monitoring reports with updates on the project status. The general terms and conditions within the Grant Agreements will be monitored to ensure value for money. This decision is seeking the approval for; 

5.2.2 To approve allocations of Robbery funding £3m, funded from 2023/24 Mayoral growth precept funding, allocating equal grants for up to 15 identified local authorities. 

5.2.3 To approve allocating MyEnds Lite grants of £0.28m to 23 local authorities not funded for a MyEnds 2.0 programme, funded via £0.6m growth and £5.64m VRU agreed budget across 2024/2025 and 2025/2026 (including approve reallocation of PCD1519 MyEnds £0.6m allocation across eligible original MyEnds boroughs) as well as £0.2m of reserves. 

5.2.4 To approve allocating sustainability funding for eligible MyEnds 1.0 areas. Officers will make sure the additional funding of these grants are reflected with project specific amended outcomes.  

  5.2.5 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 bids for grant funding made and all offers made of grant funding; and/or where appropriate a strategy for grant giving. 

• Approve the strategy for the award of individual grants and/ or the award of all individual grants whether to secure or contribute to securing crime reduction in London or for other purposes.  

6. Public Health Approach  

6.1 London’s Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) is taking a public health approach to violence reduction, that is contextual; looking at the context and influences that impact on individuals at significant points in their life.  

6.2 Evidence-based practice is fundamental to the implementation of a public health approach to reducing violence. Therefore, more research including the delivery and gather of good practice and ‘what works’ is required to deepen and broaden the evidence base around violence reduction, diversion and prevention in London. The delivery to date for these programmes still requires further support to address the ‘what works’ question and support ongoing good practice. 

6.3 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 bids for grant funding made and all offers made of grant funding; and/or where appropriate a strategy for grant giving. 

• Approve the strategy for the award of individual grants and/ or the award of all individual grants whether to secure or contribute to securing crime reduction in London or for other purposes. 

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 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.  All programmes being extended have had initial screening around equality impact and it was established that a full EQIA was not required. Initial screening for new programmes will be undertaken to establish if a full EQIA is required.  

3. The VRU have commissioned a specialist provider to undertake a community needs assessment to inform the recommissioning of the MyEnds 2.0 programme from April 2024. This will ensure the VRU is led by the most updated information on local needs, gaps in support and drivers of violence, in keeping with the hyper-local approach of the programme. 

8.3 The VRU have also commissioned EDI consultants to work with the teams to develop training, awareness and recommendations for future work programme and action plan developments to ensure the VRU are developing their equality, diversity and inclusion work practices as much as possible going forward. For both the team and stakeholders, as well as for the Londoners we serve.