Organisations supporting children affected by domestic abuse have been given a £3 million funding boost.

Today (Tuesday 28 April) the Home Office has announced £3.1 million will go to specialist services for children who have both been directly and indirectly affected by domestic abuse. This can include one-to-one and group counselling sessions to improve the mental health of children affected and early intervention schemes.

It comes as the ground-breaking Domestic Abuse Bill will be debated by MPs at the Bill’s second reading today.

The new funding will be split between local authorities, children’s charities and Police and Crime Commissioners across England and Wales.

Minister for Safeguarding Victoria Atkins said:

It is unacceptable that some children have to witness appalling abuse carried out in their home by those they should trust the most.

This funding will go towards supporting these children, healing their emotional scars, and ensuring they can move forwards and have a positive future.

Recipients of the funding include Barnardo’s, Cambridgeshire County Council and the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Northumbria.

Sarah Crawley, Director of Barnardo’s Cymru, said:

We are delighted that funding for our Opening Closed Doors service will continue for another year. Domestic abuse is an epidemic with devastating effects on children and their families. It leaves families in a state of trauma, with significant impact on their emotional and mental health.

Sadly the pandemic has seen incidents of domestic violence escalate still further and has highlighted the importance of support for families.

The Domestic Abuse Bill will introduce a wide range of measures to support victims and survivors of domestic abuse as well as ensure perpetrators are punished. Some of the measures included in the Bill include:

• create a statutory definition of domestic abuse, emphasising it can be more than just physical violence
• establish the role of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner in law
• provide police with new Domestic Abuse Protection Orders and Domestic Abuse Protection Notices
• place a statutory duty on local authorities to provide support to victims of domestic abuse
• prohibit perpetrators from cross examining witnesses in family courts in England and Wales
• ensure victims of domestic abuse receive special measures in criminal courts, such as allowing them to provide evidence by video link

In addition to the funding and measures in the Bill, the government has provided additional support to help those at risk of domestic abuse during the coronavirus outbreak.

Earlier this month, the Home Secretary launched the #YouAreNotAlone domestic abuse public awareness campaign which has reached more than 120 million people online, and pledged a further £2 million to bolster domestic abuse charities online support services.

Further measures include:

With the UK into its sixth week of lockdown measures, the Planning Inspectorate’s services continue to operate but the progress of some casework is affected. This update explains what you can expect from our service over the short and medium term.

What to expect from our service in England

We are continuing to issue decisions where we can and 1,625 have been issued across all case types since lockdown restrictions started. Not being able to visit sites and hold public events has, however, clearly had an impact on our ability to process cases and the time it is taking to reach a decision.

As explained in our guidance, to limit the spread of the Coronavirus we have postponed site visits up to the middle of May, as well as most hearing and inquiry physical events where these would otherwise have taken place in May. Our case officers have notified parties of event postponement until further notice. We will be issuing updated information on arrangements for postponed events as soon as practicable in line with latest government advice.

We have been able to progress cases where:

• the physical event was concluded prior to lockdown restrictions;
• no physical event is required to make a decision; or
• a physical event is still further in the future and preparatory activity can continue (e.g. via telephone case conferences).

New cases continue to arrive at normal levels and are being registered and processed as far as possible. As at 23 April, there were 9,591 open cases. In the last three weeks we have seen the number of open cases rise by 337. See our latest statistical release for more data on casework performance.

Implementing digital events

Ensuring we can continue to provide our service is important to the planning sector and economy – to provide certainty on planning decisions.

If you have read our recent updates, you may be aware of the work taking place behind the scenes to implement digital events. These are hearings and inquiries held via telephone or video conferencing.

Whilst this had been planned for later in the year to build on the successes of the Rosewell review, we have prioritised implementing digital events to progress cases during this unprecedented time. The latest on this work includes:

• The first fully ‘digital’ hearing is due to take place on 11 May.
• We are preparing for additional cases to be heard by digital hearings/inquiries in May/early June with a view to scaling up digital events further over June/July.
• We are assessing postponed cases to establish whether they can proceed by digital, traditional or a ‘hybrid’ approach, in order to re-arrange these in due course accordingly.
• A trial of ‘virtual site visits’ is underway involving thirteen Inspectors.
• Five local advisory visits have taken place remotely (critical for helping Local Planning Authorities to progress local plans and reduce the length of examinations).

We must ensure this approach works and maintains the standards of fairness, public access and inclusion for the four main groups involved: the appellant/agent, the Local Planning Authority (LPA), the Inspector and any interested parties such as local communities. Getting this right will provide an improved model which works now and after the current crisis and ensures we continue to issue fair and robust decisions and recommendations.

Naturally, there are challenges to overcome such as access considerations and capacity among local planning authority staff who may be stretched during the COVID-19 outbreak. We are engaging with the Law Society, National Infrastructure Planning Association (NIPA), Planning and Environment Bar Association (PEBA), Planning Officer’s Society and Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) on this work. We are also learning from the local government experiences of running public digital meetings.

Following the current trials our aim is to:

Three months: Roll out good practice widely both in terms of number of events as well as types of casework covered, with supporting training, templates and communications.

Six months: Develop the capability to conduct fully digital and hybrid events fairly and robustly across all casework areas and for most cases.

What to expect from our service in Wales

Our latest advice for casework arrangements in Wales is available on GOV.Wales.

Can I still submit an appeal?

Yes, you can submit your appeal via the Appeals Casework Portal. Whilst we can still receive hard copy post, we are presently experiencing substantial delays. We recommend to utilise electronic methods for sending any documents wherever possible to ensure timely receipt.