Preventing violent extremism

The government's strategy

The aim is to reduce the risk from international terrorism so you live freely and with confidence. It has four parts:

1. Pursue terrorists and disrupt immediate threats
2. Protect our infrastructure and borders
3. Prepare for any incidents
4. Prevent radicalisation

The prevention element comes from the counter-terrorism strategy. It aims to stop people becoming or supporting violent extremists. It is intended as a partnership approach with the public, private, voluntary and community sectors and its objectives are to:

• Challenge violent extremist ideology and support mainstream ideology
• Disrupt those who promote violent extremism and who support the institutions where they are active
• Support individuals who are being targeted and recruited to the cause of violent extremism
• Increase the resilience of communities to violent extremism
• Address the grievances which ideologues are exploiting

Government's Counter Terrorism Strategy  

Government funding

In 2007 the Government launched its Preventing Violent Extremism Pathfinder Fund which delivered £6m in funding to 70 priority local authorities to work with partners and communities to deliver a community-based response to violent extremism.

Wycombe District Council was one the authorities chosen and ran a number of projects in 2007-08.

In 2008 Ministers announced that £45m would be made available over the next three years to focus on building communities that are resilient to violent extremism. Local authorities with a minimum Muslim population of 4000 (based on the 2001 census data) will receive £85,000. They will also receive an additional £20,000 for every additional 5,000 Muslims in their local area in year 1. This will rise to £25,000 in year 2 and £31,000 in year 3.

For year 2 the government proposed to drop the eligibility criteria so that those local authorities with a Muslim population of 3,000 would qualify for funding and, in year 3, to reduce it to 2,000.

The situation in Buckinghamshire

In 2008, Wycombe District Council and Aylesbury Vale District Council were awarded funding.

Wycombe District Council

Based on its experiences and learning during the Pathfinder year, Wycombe District Council has been able to put in place processes that are transparent and which minimised delays in getting projects up and running.

In May 2008 the council invited applications to run projects for up to three years to address the following outcomes:

• Children and young people
• Inter community and inter faith
• Strengthening participation and leadership
• Working with vulnerable groups

The themes of work were developed by its Community Cohesion Steering Group, a sub-group of the Wycombe Partnership.  A range of local groups were consulted in the process of drawing up the themes.

Applications were welcomed from constituted organisations. Each applicant organisation was required to demonstrate that it is had knowledge and experience relevant to Wycombe.

10 projects were approved in July 2008. View the list of projects.

Contact

Community Cohesion Coordinator
Community Services
Wycombe District Council
Queen Victoria Road
High Wycombe
HP11 1BB

Email:  wycombe-one@wycombe.gov.uk
Telephone: 01494 421751

Visit the Wycombe-one website.

Aylesbury Vale District Council

In February 2008 Aylesbury Vale District Council established its strategy group to oversee its work on preventing violent extremism.

In June 2008 the council held a meeting with local organisations and individuals to share information about the strategy and timetable for allocation. They sought to establish existing provision, identify risks, who should be involved and how best to communicate progress and outcomes. 

A new grant scheme was developed to decide how the majority of the money is spent and was launched on 30 June with a closing date for applications of 12 September.

Applications were invited that addressed the following themes:

• Support to help prevent vulnerable people from being influenced by radical violent ideology.
• Support to help vulnerable young people become better engaged with established groups, role models or structured activities.
• Projects to support women to develop relationships with their children and wider communities to make their best contribution.
• Projects to enable the inclusion of excluded groups - whether by ethnicity, faith or gender - by capacity building and joint projects.
• Training to develop the awareness of the risk, causes and signs of radicalisation amongst service providers.
• Development of mutual understanding, trust and respect between communities.
• Projects to assess and address the impact of national and international events on the local community.

Successful bids will be announced in October.

Contact

Email: housingneedsandadvice@aylesburyvaledc.gov.uk
Telephone: 01296 585809

Visit Aylesbury Vale's website

National Indicator 35 - Building resilience to violent extremism

National indicator 35 (NI 35) is intended to measure the progress local authorities make on the Government's Prevent Strategy. It is one of the 198 national indicators introduced by Government in April 2008. Read more about NI 35 (PDF - opens in a new window).

We have included NI 35 within the Bucks Strategic Partnership's Local Area Agreement (LAA).  This sets out our local priorities for the area for the next 3 years and is agreed by government. The Bucks Strategic Partnership is a Local Strategic Partnership (LSP) for the Buckinghamshire area. It brings together public and private organisations under an agreement to cooperate in improving life in Bucks - please use the link in the table below for further information. 

Performance against NI 35 is based on each of the district councils' self assessment on:

1. Understanding of, and engagement with, Muslim communities
2. Knowledge and understanding of the preventing violent extremism agenda
3. Effective development of an action plan to build the resilience of communities and support vulnerable individuals
4. Effective oversight, delivery and evaluation of projects and actions

They are assessed on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is the lowest and 5 is the highest. 

We have agreed with government, for Year 1 of our Local Area Agreement, Wycombe District Council will self assess and publish its baseline and improvement targets to 2011 and the remaining district councils will do so in Year 2. This recognises that Wycombe already has a year's expertise and is leading on this indicator in Buckinghamshire.

Read the delivery implementation plan.