Decision details

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

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.

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.

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