The Thames Valley is a large and diverse area made up of a multitude of local partners together with organisations which work at a regional and national level.
We established our Partnership Model to facilitate partnership working, involving our stakeholders in the development and delivery of our programme.
Through this tiered structure, it provides governance and scrutiny, leadership, coordination of delivery and seeks to drive community involvement. It is also the structure through which we maintain oversight of the Serious Violence Duty.
The key elements to our model are as follows:
- Office of the Police & Crime Commissioner performance and oversight functions – as part of the wider role and responsibilities held by the Police & Crime Commissioner
- VPP Strategy Board – held quarterly, this is our senior level board with a focus on serious violence prevention and oversight of compliance by local partners with the Serious Violence Duty. The board convenes representatives from all nine local areas, together with key partners and other Serious Violence Duty holders. The Strategy Board members are responsible for representing their own diverse local partnership structures and for cascading information and decisions.
- Community Safety Partnerships (CSPs) – the CSPs are required local structures and sit at the local level, including at the district council level in Oxfordshire (pending local government restructure processes which are underway in 2025/2026). The CSPs are local multi-agency partnerships with a breadth of responsibilities regarding crime, anti-social behaviour, and safe communities – including the prevention and reduction of Serious Violence. CSPs are the structures which have developed and published local Serious Violence Strategies in response to the Serious Violence Duty.
- Prevention Partnerships – during 2025/2026, all nine upper-tier partnerships will be preparing to form Prevention Partnerships, which will take an operational role in the identification of cohorts of young people in their local area who are at risk of being drawn into crime and violence, putting in place diversion/interventions and case managing them through a local Young Futures Prevention Panel.
You can learn more about the area we cover and the local partnership structures on the Areas we cover page.