The impact of local commissioning on victim services in England and Wales: An empirical study
| Published date | 01 May 2019 |
| Author | Lesley Simmonds |
| DOI | 10.1177/0269758018787938 |
| Date | 01 May 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
The impact of local
commissioning on victim
services in England and
Wales: An empirical study
Lesley Simmonds
Plymouth University, UK
Abstract
This paper follows on from earlier work in which I discussed the potential impacts of the local
commissioning of victim services by Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) in England and
Wales. The introduction of this elected role and the devolution of responsibility to local PCCs was
said to raise a range of issues for both victims and the voluntary sector, given that agencies within
this sector are major providers of support for those affected by crime. Before 2014 the approach
to the funding of victim services was not particularly of concern, save for questions being asked in
the ‘audit culture’ of the early 2000s, around the extent to which the government-funded agency
Victim Support could be said to be providing ‘value for money’. However, these concerns gained
momentum with the incoming Coalition government of 2010, and by 2014 local commissioning by
PCCs had been implemented. This meant the previous mixed economy of victim services provision
via the largely centrally funded organisation ‘Victim Support’ as a ‘national victims’ service’, and
an array of smaller and more financially independent victim agencies who had to bid for pots
of funding much more competitively, has given way to the political appeal of a free market for all.
In order then to explore the reality of this shift, a piece of empirical research was undertaken
with voluntary-sector agencies in the far southwest of England. Essentially the research provides
evidence that the issues raised in my earlier work have indeed come to fruition.
Keywords
Local commissioning, Police and Crime Commissioner, voluntary sector, neo-liberalism, victim
support
Corresponding author:
Lesley Simmonds, S chool of Law, Crimin ology and Governmen t, Plymouth Univer sity, Drake Circus, Plymouth PL4
8AA, UK.
Email: L.Simmonds @plymouth.ac.uk
International Review of Victimology
2019, Vol. 25(2) 181–199
ªThe Author(s) 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/0269758018787938
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Background
In 2014 the provision of victim services within England and Wales experienced a seismic shift,
away from the longstanding combination of service provision that had developed over the past
40 years. That model of provision had comprised a voluntary sector in which the largely centrally
funded national agency Victim Support, and a range of smaller organisations whose funding was
not necessarily so stable, were located (Simmonds, 2016; Williams, 2016). Victim Support pro-
vided a framework of local services to victims of a range of crimes throughout England and Wales,
and as such took the form of a generic service. Other voluntary agencies tended to offer more
specialist services to victims of crimes such as rape and sexual assault and domestic abuse, as well
as even more specific services working on behalf of victims in response to particular high-profile
cases, for example the Suzy Lamplugh Trust (see https://www.suzylamplugh.org/) and the Zito
Trust (see http://www.zitotrust.co.uk/).
As has been discussed elsewhere, Victim Support developed in the 1970s to fill the gap that
existed between offenders and victims, as prior to this there had been little or no specific provision
made for victims of crime as actors within the criminal justice system (Mawby and Walklate, 1994;
Mawby, 2016). Effectively, victims had long been regarded as the ‘Cinderella’ of the criminal
justice system, and so Victim Support was developed to create a more level playing field for them
(Mawby and Walklate, 1994). Victim Support had therefore enjoyed a long history wherein its core
funding was provided via direct grants from central government. Indeed, by 2008 the agency had
been shaped by the then New Labour government into a national victims’ service (Victim Support,
2012). As such, the central office in London (the National Association of Victim Support Schemes)
was at the heart of a highly developed network of local schemes across England and Wales.
1
The
national office in London acted as a regulatory body, setting standards of service for the network of
local schemes, and re-distributing grant aid from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to those local
schemes. As I and others have discussed, Victim Support provides emotional and practical help
to victims of a range of crimes, and so for many years enjoyed the total confidence of government
and state agencies such as the police (Simmonds, 2013; 2016; Mawby, 2016). This was due in part,
no doubt, to the increasing professionalisation that the agency had developed over a long period of
time (Maguire and Kynch, 2000; Simmonds, 2005; 2009; 2013).
Victim Support had been financed by central government as the service to which the police
referred victims. By way of confirming the high level of esteem in which the government held
Victim Support, in the first Victims’ Charter in 1990 it was the only agency mentioned to which the
police could refer victims. Although the subsequent Victims Charter of 1996 and later Codes of
Practice for Victims in 2006, 2013 and 2015 have since widened the referral offer that can be made,
Victim Support continued to be the only generic victims’ agency, and the only agency that had
attracted core funding from central government. In this way it had remained at the top of the table,
so to speak.
In response to Directive 2012/29/EU calling for greater clarity around the accessibility of victim
services, in 2014 the government introduced local commissioning of victim services (European
Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2016), as refle cted in the latest Code of Practice for
Victims in 2015 (MoJ, 2015). This meant that the responsibility for providing services would now
be shared by the MoJ and local PCCs throughout England and Wales (Wedlock and Tapley, 2016).
Mawby (2016) adds that this move was also a direct policy change by the UK government, so that
service provision ‘would largely, be localised; funding would be by competitive tendering; and
service outcomes would be rigorously assessed’ (Mawby 2016: 11).
182 International Review of Victimology 25(2)
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