The London Borough of Barking and Dagenham (LBBD) Community Safety Partnership (CSP) Violence Duty Strategy has been produced as part of the requirements of the Serious Violence Duty (SVD), introduced by the Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. 

The SVD places several requirements upon local areas which includes the below:

1. Setting and agreeing a local partnership arrangement to lead on the duty
2. Agreeing a definition of serious violence
3. Having consistent data sharing
4. Analytical processes to produce a Strategic Needs Assessment
5. Production, delivery and ongoing monitoring of a strategy to set out how the duty will be implemented locally. 

The Duty requires specified authorities to work together to prevent and reduce serious violence, including identifying the kinds of serious violence that occur in the area, the causes of that violence, and to prepare and implement a strategy for preventing and reducing serious violence.   

The responsible authorities (also known as ‘duty holders’) in the Serious Violence Duty will be:  

• Metropolitan Police Service (MPS)
• Fire and Rescue Authorities 
• Justice organisations (youth offending teams and probation services)  
• Health bodies (Integrated Care Boards)  
• Local authorities 
• Educational institutions

Prisons and youth custodial institutions will be under a separate duty to cooperate with duty holders, but they are not duty holders.  

Priorities and principles of the Strategy

The LBBD CSP SVD strategy will continue to work on our current CSP priorities and have devised five principles in line with our objectives which are based around Primary, Secondary and Tertiary preventative measures:

• Primary Prevention – Actions taken prior to violence occurring. 
• Secondary Prevention – Response when violence does occur, addressing the short- term consequences of violence, preventing progression. 
• Tertiary Prevention – This refers to the long-term response to serious violence. 

These five principles, devised via the CSP, are referred to as the Five D’s below:

1. Deter - (Primary Intervention) We will develop our existing early intervention and prevention practices, via evaluation projects, to adopt a best practice approach. We will ensure we regularly communicate with providers, young people, and members of the community, sharing intelligence and scrutinising it. 
2. Disrupt - (Primary Prevention) Using data, intelligence, and enforcement methods, we will disrupt violence and violence related activity. 
3. Duty – (Secondary Prevention) Halting the progression of serious violence by working with those known to or currently being processed within the criminal justice system, and others on the periphery of it. 
4. Develop – (Tertiary Prevention) Concentrating on rehabilitation for those who have committed serious violence and support for victims. 
5. Data - (Primary, Secondary & Tertiary) We will use data analysis throughout our intervention stages, to review, monitor and measure our effectiveness.

Serious Violence Duty Strategy (PDF, 6.1 MB)

Visit the Community safety partnership plan page