Violence Reduction Alliance

Our Aim

Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent’s Violence Reduction Alliance (VRA) is a multi-agency partnership aiming to work together to strengthen the visibility, early identification and partnership response to prevent violence and its associated harms.

Overall crime rates within Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent are well below national and regional averages; however, to improve our position through early intervention and prevention the Staffordshire Police, Fire & Rescue and Crime Commissioner formed the VRA in March 2021.

The VRA works in partnership with a broad range of agencies to understand the causes and consequences of violence, focusing on early intervention and prevention and informed by evidence and evaluation of interventions.

You can find out more about our plans and initiatives in our Violence Reduction Strategy below:

Violence Reduction Strategy
Strategy Journey

Our Approach

The VRA takes a public health approach to tackling violence by working with a range of agencies, with no professional boundaries, to address its root causes.

We use data to understand violent crimes better and take an evidence-based approach to ensure the interventions we use are likely to work. By understanding the root causes of violence both short- and long-term solutions are generated. To deliver our strategy, we foster robust partnership work to deliver five priority areas: 

Watch this short video, created by South Yorkshire Violence Reduction Unit, to learn more about the Public Health Approach. 

Serious Violence Duty

Introduced as part of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, the Serious Violence Duty is a key part of the Government’s wider programme of work to prevent and reduce serious violence. In 2022/23 the VRA Board became the accountable body for the delivery of the new Serious Violence Duty across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent. 

The Duty requires specified authorities to work together to plan, share data, intelligence and knowledge, to generate evidence-based analysis of the problem and solutions to prevent and reduce serious violence in local areas. 

The specified authorities are: Police, Fire and Rescue, Integrated Care Board, Youth Offending Services, Probation and Local Authorities. 

Since the VRA Board became the accountable body, partners have attended workshops with Crest Advisory (commissioned by the Home Office to deliver bespoke support and ensure each area is ready to comply with the Duty) to discuss the partnership work already being undertaken locally to help prevent and reduce violence. Following these workshops Crest Advisory have assessed the VRA as ‘ready‘ to deliver the Duty.

Serious Violence Duty

Help and Support available to you

Visit our Support page for further information and advice on where to go for support.

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Campaigns

We are taking a partnership and inclusion approach to bringing about positive changes in communities throughout Staffordshire & Stoke-on-Trent. These projects are created or selected based on understanding and needs of local communities, brought by those who are living and working within them.

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