Yesterday, Safeguarding Minister Jess Philips launched the government’s long-awaited strategy on violence against women and girls. Labour committed to halving VAWG within a decade in its 2024 election manifesto. However, the strategy to set out how it would achieve this goal was initially expected in Spring 2025, then delayed until summer and autumn, before finally being launched in the week before Christmas.
Experts in the women’s sector told the Guardian they felt sidelined and excluded from the development of the strategy. One source said: “It is worse than under the Tories. In fact, we were so much better off under the Tories, you could get a meeting, they engaged with you. This whole process has been incredibly haphazard.” Earlier this week Karen Bradley, chair of the home affairs committee, wrote to Jess Philips and Victims Minister Alex Davies-Jones, complaining that “there has been poor engagement and transparency with VAWG stakeholders throughout the development of the VAWG strategy.” Bradley also noted the VAWG advisory board – an expert panel set up to guide policy – had met only twice in person and once online, and its role had been limited.
The strategy does recognise the scale of the problem. One in eight women in England and Wales in the year to March 2025 experienced domestic abuse, sexual assault or stalking. On average, almost 200 rapes were recorded by the police each day in the year ending June 2025. More than 150 women in England and Wales are killed by men every year. 39% of 13 to 17 year-olds who were in a relationship in the past year experienced emotional or physical abuse. The strategy also states an ambition to make the UK ‘one of the safest places in the world for women and girls’, and recognises that VAWG should be treated with the same seriousness as terrorism and organised crime.
It focuses heavily on prevention, and improving relationship education in schools. It also introduces a number of criminal justice system reforms, including a ban on nudification apps, a rollout of rape and serious sexual offence units in every police force, and an expansion of domestic abuse protection orders to cover other forms of VAWG.
However, experts in the women’s sector say the strategy falls short of what is needed, particularly in terms of the resources required to fund the frontline services women rely on when fleeing domestic and sexual abuse.
Responding to the new strategy, the End Violence Against Women Coalition said in their statement:
“We remain deeply concerned by the ongoing funding challenges faced by the specialist VAWG sector, which is on its knees after years of chronic under-funding, a reality that has been made worse by the significant delays to this strategy.
We call on the government to make their commitments to reforming the commissioning process swift and effective, and ensure there are no further delays in frontline services getting the funding they need so as to ensure no more survivors are turned away, and no more expert staff made redundant. This must include ringfenced funding for specialist services led ‘by and for’ Black and minoritised women.”
Gemma Sherrington, Chief Executive of Refuge, echoed these concerns:
“Encouraging survivors to come forward must be matched by the capacity of services to respond, yet the Strategy fails to meaningfully address the deep and ongoing underfunding of specialist support services. Without this vital investment, it risks directing survivors towards a system that is already stretched beyond capacity. Unless these foundations are urgently fixed, the Strategy’s ability to deliver real change will be severely constrained.
“While the Government’s commitment of an additional £19 million for safe accommodation over the next three years is welcome, it represents only a drop in the ocean compared to the number of survivors for whom safe housing could be the difference between life and death.
“The estimated total yearly shortfall from current government spending on specialist services is £307 million, including a £62 million shortfall for refuge services and £212 million for community-based services. Put simply, £6.3 million a year – £19 million over three – is not enough to support the many survivors in desperate need of somewhere safe to rebuild their lives.”
Farah Nazeer, Chief Executive of Women’s Aid, said:
“It’s commendable to see effort for a whole system response to VAWG, including long-awaited interventions in healthcare. These will complement vital work being delivered already by specialist services, but we are mindful that it will also strain frontline services by a planned increase in referrals through the NHS, as well as via education and criminal justice systems.
So it’s important that these services are well-equipped to respond, given that over 60% of referrals into refuges are already declined, primarily due to a lack of bed spaces. Additional funding by government into safe accommodation and other specialist services is welcome, but this needs to go much further, including through ring-fenced investment in services run by and for Black and minoritised women and dedicated support for child victims.”
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