In April 2022, the Government announced that 20 police force areas across the country would receive funding to support the Violence Reduction Units (VRU’s), where it was confirmed that 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 will be named Cleveland’s Unit for the Reduction of Violence (CURV). The work of CURV will be supported by a range of complementary partnership action, with £1.4m of investment in ‘Grip’ activity, which will support the police to take additional enforcement activity in specific hotspot locations most affected by serious violence.
At a local level, preventing, reducing and tackling serious violence is a key priority in the PCC’s Police and Crime Plan.
Nationally, the VRU programme forms a key part of the Government’s suite of actions to tackle serious violent crime as set out in the Beating Crime Plan. As a mandatory requirement, the Home Office has specified that Violence Reduction Units must conduct a local evaluation, evidencing the action being taken to build upon the Strategic Needs Assessment and Response Strategy to reduce serious violence. In addition, any information relating to local evaluations should form part of CURVs annual report.
The Research and Evaluation Partner will be embedded into CURV.
An open tender was carried out using EU Supply as the tender portal, advertising the contract in Contract Finder as per the Public Procurement Regulations 2015.
Details of the Procurement Process are included in the appended report.
Final Report for a Research and Evaluation Partner (application, 338kB)