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To enter into a funding agreement for Domestic
Homicide Reviews (DHRs) in Gloucestershire for the year 2026/27 and
2027/28

Reasons for the decision

Domestic Homicide Reviews (DHRs) were
established on a statutory basis under the Domestic Violence Crime
and Victims Act 2004, with the provision coming into force in April
2011. Reviews were renamed as Domestic Abuse Related Death Reviews
(DARDRs) following the Victim and Prisoners Act 2024. The revised
statutory guidance has not yet been issued, so Home Office
documents still currently refer to DHRs.
The Home Office Statutory DHR guidance (2016) places responsibility
for establishing a DHR with the local Community Safety Partnership
(CSP). Within Gloucestershire, each District has its own CSP. A
local decision has been made that the County-Wide CSP Safer
Gloucestershire will work in partnership with districts to support
the statutory function for establishing a DHR/DARDR.

Local DHR guidance has been produced to outline the role of the CSP
and local processes for DHRs/DARDRs.
As part of the development of the local process, 6 District CSPs,
alongside the OPCC and ICB have agreed to jointly fund DHRs/DARDRs
in Gloucestershire. This agreement acknowledges that the learning
from local reviews is countywide and should not just consider the
district in which the death took place.
In addition, cost sharing provides support to individual CSPs, with
centralised coordination of DHRs/DARDRs taking place within the
OPCC. This centralised support includes the commissioning and
contract management of independent chairs, as well as coordination
and oversight of reviews as they progress. Safer Gloucestershire,
via the OPCC, also takes the remit of holding agencies to account
for progressing and implementing recommendations from
reviews.
Costs associated with DHRs/DARDRs are linked with the independent
chair and administration support.
The benefits of this approach are that the costs of carrying out
DHRs/DARDRs do not fall solely on the responsible district and are
instead shared out across the eight partners. The agreement
specifies that the OPCC will fund 50% of the independent chair
costs up to a maximum of £5000. The remaining 50% of chairing
costs will be shared equally between the District CSPs signed up to
this agreement and the ICB.
In addition, the district can access support and guidance being
provided by the DASV Strategic Coordinator and the OPCC.

Alternative options considered

The council could choose not to enter into the
county-wide agreement. In this case, it alone would be responsible
for the costs associated with running a DHR. The typical cost for
running one DHR will typically exceed £10k. For the year
2025/26, we have been asked to contribute c£5k to cover the
costs of running 14 DHRs and 2 rapid reviews. Two of the DHRs were
for Cheltenham residents – and without the funding agreement,
CBC would have had to pick up the full costs of the reviews. A
single review completed in 2024/25 cost in the region of
£14k.