In April 2022, the Government announced that 20 police force areas across the country would receive funding to support Violence Reduction Units (VRUs.)
The Police and Crime Commissioner for Cleveland will receive a budget of £3.5m over the next three years to establish a local VRU.
Locally, the VRU is called Cleveland Unit for the Reduction of Violence (CURV).
A range of complementary partnership action will support the work of CURV. There will be £1.4m investment in ‘Grip’ activity. It will support the police to take additional enforcement activity in specific hotspot locations most affected by serious violence.
A key priority of the PCC’s Police and Crime Plan is to prevent, reduce and tackle serious violence.
Nationally, the VRU programme is a key part of the Government’s suite of actions to tackle serious violent crime. This is set out in the Beating Crime Plan.
Strategic Needs Assessment
As a mandatory requirement, the Home Office has specified that VRUs need to produce a Strategic Needs Assessment (SNA)
The SNA will identify the drivers of serious violence acting in the local area and taking steps to identify the cohorts and communities most affected;
VRUS must also produce a response strategy. It will describe the multi-agency response delivered by the VRU, its members and other partners. The strategy will tackle the drivers of crime and work to reduce serious violence in the specified area.
the SNA will be used to inform the CURV Response Strategy and Delivery Plan. This will include setting priorities and future commissioning intentions.
The CURV Governance Group will oversee the SNA. The SNA is expected to be refreshed annually.
CURV carried out an open tender exercise using EU Supply as the tender portal. This advertised the contract in Contract Finder as per the Public Procurement Regulations 2015.
The attached report includes details of the Procurement Process.
Decision 2022-0002: PCC Final report for SNA (application, 331kB)