Issue - meetings

To receive a report from Corporate Manager for Public Health, Regulation and Housing on the Devon Serious Violence Strategy.

Cabinet had before it a report * from the Corporate Manager for Public Health, Regulation and Housing on the Serious Violence Duty Strategy.

The Cabinet Member for Community and Leisure outlined the contents of the report with particular reference to the following:

·         The Serious Violence Duty was a new legal responsibility introduced in 2023. It required specified authorities to work together to prevent and reduce serious violence in the area.

·         The core elements of this new duty Devon-wide are to:

            Prepare a local serious violence Strategic Needs Assessment.

            Prepare and publish a local strategy to prevent and reduce serious

Violence informed by that needs assessment.

·         Local authorities at District and County level and their Community Safety Partnerships are specifically named as specified authorities in the duty. Other such authorities are the Police, Probation and Youth Offending Teams, Fire authorities and the NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups. No one authority had a lead role.

·         There is a legal requirement to have completed the Strategic Needs Assessment in 2023, which was work completed by the Safer Devon Partnership (as the County upper-tier Community Safety Partnership). This was undertaken in collaboration with all the district Community Safety Partnerships including our East and Mid Devon Community Safety Partnership.

·         The duty governance arrangements build on existing peninsula wide partnership working between all Community Safety Partnerships and the Police and Crime Commissioner where the Council’s local Community Safety Partnership is represented through its membership and engagement with the Safer Devon Partnership.

·         The Safer Devon Partnership had been working hard to finalise the public-facing publication version of the strategy, which would be ready in the next week or so. In the meantime, all Safer Devon Partnership partners including Mid Devon had agreed and finalised the core strategy components as set out in Section 3 of the report. In particular, this included the six key priorities set out in Section 3.7 which formed the overall statement of intent of the strategy.

·         These priorities reflected the legal duty requirement to take a public health, preventative and trauma-informed approach. As defined focus areas, they are also in keeping with the duty by encompassing public space youth violence, including weapons-related violence and drug related criminal activities with a strong emphasis on young people.  They were of course also reflective of the findings around serious violence identified in the Devon Strategic Needs Assessment.

Discussion took place regarding:

·         The formula funding and how it had been split into areas and the populations within these.

·         Concerns about overall reasonability of the Serious Violence Duty Strategy.

·         The language used in the strategy regarding care experience or involved in children social care.

·         Devon wide Strategy and would this work with 9 Local authorities and would the strategy be shared before adopting?

·         The Strategy to go to Community Policy Development Group (PDG) before coming to Cabinet for adopting.

·         Dismantling of Youth services and facilities for young people.

·         When adopting the strategy would Mid Devon have their own priority order.

·         Request to consider renegotiating how the calculation of population  ...  view the full minutes text for item 99