Minutes:
The Board was briefed that there were three Domestic Homicide Reviews outstanding at present. The updates were as follows:
DHR 1
Following the review by the Home Office Quality Assurance Panel, the report was sent back to the author to consider the recommendations made for areas of improvement. This amended report was received by LBB on 2nd June 2021 and was being proof read. The report would be sent to the family and a proposal to publish the recommendations only, was with the Chair of the Safer Bromley Partnership.
DHR 2
The report was complete and had been shared with the DHR Panel for sign off by 16th June 2021. It would then be placed with the SPB Chair for approval, and then submitted to the Home Office for Quality Assurance.
DHR 3
The report was with the Home Office Quality Assurance Panel.
It was noted that the DHRs would ultimately lead to a final report detailing lessons learnt and recommendations for any actions that could be taken to try and prevent a similar domestic homicide in the future.
Prevent update:
The Board was advised of some national changes in that Prevent was under a review being led by William Shawcross. The review would gather and analyse a range of information to underpin robust, evidence-based findings and recommendations on the Government’s strategy for supporting people vulnerable to being drawn into terrorism.
The Protect Duty Consultation was now out and this could impact local authorities with respect to resource implications. A further update would follow later this year. New statutory guidance had introduced a framework of standards for local authorities which included an annual return, submitted in April 2021.
The Board was briefed regarding the type of referrals received locally and the Assistant Director asked whether there had been an increase in far right referrals compared with previous years. The Head of Service provided details of the figures released by the Home Office of the number of individuals referred to and supported through the Prevent programme for the period April 2019 to March 2020. There had been 6,287 referrals to Prevent. This was an increase of 10% compared to the record low in the previous year (5,737 in the year ending March 2019). Of these, 697 (11%) were adopted as a Channel case, with 302 (43%) cases referred due to concerns regarding right-wing radicalisation, followed by Islamist radicalisation 210 (30%).
The Assistant Director asked what ideologies featured in the other cases. The Head of Service responded that most were mixed, unstable or unclear ideologies and explained that this related to instances where people exhibited a combination of elements from multiple ideologies, or shifted between different ideologies, or where the individual did not present a coherent ideology, yet may still pose a terrorism risk. Deep rooted grievances held by individuals sometimes resulted in moving from one group to another in order to find a place where the frustrations could be addressed.
The LBB Prevent lead continued to deliver Workshops to Raise Awareness of Prevent via MS Teams. The training had been adapted locally to include updates on the risks of radicalisation via social platforms and the new threats from groups such as of the INCEL movement–an online community of young men who consider themselves unable to attract women sexually, typically associated with views that are hostile towards women and men who are sexually active.
The Board noted that Counter Terrorism training was to be provided to CCTV staff.
RESOLVED that the DHR and Prevent updates be noted and that a further Prevent update would be provided in due course, following the outcome of the Prevent Duty Consultation.