Policy background Serious violence duty
In April 2018, the Government published its Serious Violence Strategy to help further tackle knife crime, gun crime and homicide. The Strategy explained that the Government’s approach was not solely focused on law enforcement, but depended on partnerships across a number of sectors such as education, health, social services, housing, youth services and victim services. In April 2019, the Home Office published a consultation paper seeking views on options to implement a multi-agency or "public health" approach to preventing and tackling serious violence. This set out three options to achieve this:
a new duty on specific organisations to have due regard to the prevention and tackling of serious violence;
a new duty to revise Community Safety Partnerships ("CSPs"), as established under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 ("the 1998 Act"). Section 6 of the 1998 Act requires CSPs to formulate and implement strategies to reduce crime and disorder, combat the misuse of substances and reduce reoffending;
a voluntary non-legislative approach to encourage areas to adopt voluntary measures to engage in a multi-agency approach.
	The consultation closed on 28 May 2019. The Home Office received 288 responses which indicated overall support for a multi-agency public health approach but with differing views on the approach to take. The then Home Secretary issued a Written Ministerial Statement on 15 July 2019 to announce the publication of the Government’s response to the consultation. The response proposed a new duty on relevant agencies to collaborate, where possible through existing partnership structures, to prevent and reduce serious violence and to amend the 1998 Act, which sets out the strategies CSPs must formulate and implement, to explicitly include serious violence. Chapter 1 of Part 2 of the Act gives effect to these proposals.