Councils are committed to tackling drug-related crime, which can have a devastating impact on the lives of its victims and wider communities. Addressing serious violent crime requires multi-agency working across a range of partners, including health, education, local government, the police and the voluntary sector. A public health approach, which seeks to prevent people from becoming involved in crime in the first place through vital early intervention and prevention work, is central to tackling the drivers of drug-related crime. In our 2019 report, “Breaking the Cycle of Youth Violence”, we highlighted how local authorities are working in partnership to tackle serious youth violence, including county lines activity.
The LGA continues to work with the Home Office on tackling serious and organised crime. In particular, we welcome the expansion of Project Adder in July 2021 to new local authority areas. The Project Adder programme seeks to ensure that more people get effective treatment with enhanced drug treatment and recovery provision, including housing and employment support. The programme also focusses on improving communication between treatment providers and courts, prisons, and hospitals. It would be helpful for the Government to share any best practice or findings from Project Adder, to help local authorities and partners across the country adopt this approach locally.
In 2019, the Government established Violence Reduction Units in selected police force areas to help tackle serious violent crime. The VRU model aims to bring together all key local partners, including the police, local government, health, community leaders and other partners, to better understand the root causes of local violent crime and coordinate a more effective multi-agency response. Importantly, they also bring areas additional funding to tackle serious violence. We welcomed the recent announcement that the VRU model will be expanded to two new police force areas in addition to the current 18, and funding will be provided on a 3-year rather than a 1-year basis.
We have long called for the VRU model to be expanded to all police force areas and for the Government to commit to 5-year funding. This will be vital to ensure all areas can benefit from the additional resource, allow greater development of preventative strategies and instil greater confidence in the longevity of VRUs. We welcome the Government’s commitment to update the existing VRU guidance, and hope this will work cohesively with the Government’s 10-year drug strategy.