In April 2022, the Government announced that 20 police force areas across the country would receive funding to support Violence Reduction Units (VRUs), 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 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 are required to produce a Strategic Needs Assessment (SNA), identifying the drivers of serious violence acting in the local area and taking steps to identify the cohorts and communities most affected; and a response strategy, describing the multi-agency response being delivered by the VRU, its members and other partners that will tackle the drivers identified and work to reduce serious violence in the specified local area.
Overseen by the CURV Governance Group, the SNA will be used to inform the CURV Response Strategy and Delivery Plan, including priority setting and future commissioning intentions. There is an expectation that the SNA will be refreshed on an annual basis.
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.
Decision 2022-0002: PCC Final report for SNA (application, 331kB)