Tackling serious violence and its root causes is a priority for all partners in Southampton.

Southampton is a vibrant and diverse city of approximately 270,000 residents and many more who travel to the city to work and for leisure.

In Southampton, the Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) works closely with Southampton Community Safety Partnership and the Safe City Partnership. This Board oversees the delivery of the Safe City Strategy, and you can read more about how this partnership works to keep people safer here:    Safe City Partnership (southampton.gov.uk)

Southampton City Partnership have produced a Safe City Strategy for 2022 -2027 and have set out 3 priorities:

• Keeping people safe from harm
• Prevent and reduce offending
• Creating safe and stronger communities

For further information on this strategy, click here:  Safe City Strategy (southampton.gov.uk)

In addition, partners in Southampton are represented at the Hampshire and IOW Strategic Violence Reduction Partnership (SVRP) and work closely with the VRU to address the root causes of serious violence.  This is supported by understanding those people that are most vulnerable to serious violence and developing a local strategy for how we focus resources on those people in most need of support.

The VRU works with the Youth Endowment Fund to understand the evidence about what approaches work to prevent serious youth violence in the medium to longer term. You can read more about this here Youth Endowment Fund Toolkit

In addition to the services available in Southampton, the VRU commissions the following services which are available in Southampton:

• RESET programme  (custody navigators) 
  This is a custody intervention service for 18-25 year olds. The service is voluntary for young people that have been arrested and require guidance and support in moving away from offending and into employment, training or education.
• CHOICES programme for years 6 and 7  
  This is a schools workshops for years 6 & 7 addressing topics such as healthy relationships and the risks of child criminal exploitation.
• A&E NAVIGATORS
  This service engages with young people presenting to custody with injuries associated with violence.

Contact us:

VRU Manager: Debbie Ashthorpe  vru@hampshire.police.uk

Safe city Partnership:  Policy&Strategy@southampton.gov.uk