The potential impact of local commissioning on victim services in England and Wales
| Date | 01 September 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0269758016650355 |
| Published date | 01 September 2016 |
| Author | Lesley Simmonds |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
The potential impact of local
commissioning on victim
services in England and Wales
Lesley Simmonds
Plymouth University, UK
Abstract
This article looks at the shift that has taken place in the funding of victim services in England and
Wales, following the decision to appoint Police and Crime Commissioners, and give them the
responsibility to commission such services at the local level. Over the past 40 years or so the
voluntary sector agency Victim Support was ‘the major victims’ agency’ to which the majority of
victims who reported crime to the police were referred. Victim Support therefore enjoyed reliable
and consistent funding from the state, whilst its more ‘independent peers’ in the form of specialist
services, had to contend with often less generous and less stable sources of funding. The shift to
local commissioning chimes with the neo-liberal ideology which has permeated Conservative
government policy since 1979, and which the Coalition government of 2010, and the Conservative
government of 2015, have continued to champion. Thus the economy and the commissioning of
victim services are increasingly subject to ‘the market’, as the best way to achieve efficient, effective
and economic service provision. An array of government documents have talked about the
importance of introducing competition into victim service provision, both as a political goal but
also as a way of meeting the challenges that the current era of austerity poses. This paper then
explores the potential implications for victim services in devolving funding to elected Police and
Crime Commissioners in England and Wales.
Keywords
Local commissioning, Police and Crime Commissioner, neo-liberalism, voluntary sector, victim
support
Corresponding author:
Lesley Simmonds, Plymouth Law School, Plymouth University, Plymouth PL4 8AA, UK.
Email: L.Simmonds@plymouth.ac.uk
International Review of Victimology
2016, Vol. 22(3) 223–237
ªThe Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0269758016650355
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