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Crest's response to the 2025 Violence against Women and Girls Strategy

  • Crest Advisory
  • 2 hours ago
  • 3 min read

Consulting Perspective

Samantha Cunningham; Partner, Strategy | Callyane Desroches; Head of Policy and Strategy | Sophie Wilkinson; Senior Analyst | Rosie Margolis; Strategy and Insights Manager


Friday 18 December 2025


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Based on the fact that violence against women and girls (VAWG) is pervasive, with 1 in 8 women having been a victim of domestic abuse, sexual assault or staking, Crest fully endorses the position that VAWG is a national emergency which requires a robust response. Therefore, Crest is delighted that the VAWG Strategy has been published, presenting an opportunity to reset and strengthen the collective approach to tackling VAWG. 


We have over 10 years of experience providing strategic direction and support to our VAWG partners and colleagues, including developing the Policing VAWG - The National Framework for Delivery: 2024 - 2027, assessing demand on domestic abuse accommodation, and producing the first VAWG - National Policing Statement 2024. So  we see this Strategy as a critical opportunity to move beyond incremental change and towards a deliberate strategic, system-wide response. 


We published a series of blogs last year to identify tangible actions beyond policing that are needed to drive forward a consistent, unified response to VAWG. The four blogs followed the 4Ps framework - Prevent, Protect, Pursue, Prepare - which you can read by clicking the links below.



We welcome a strategy that presents solutions across three main categories: prevention, perpetrators and victim/survivors, and we hope that it presents a truly balanced and integrated approach to better meeting victims’ needs and effectively pursuing offenders. While victim support must remain central, the continued rise in VAWG offences demonstrates that this alone is insufficient. There is a clear need for a more systematic approach to ‘turning off the taps’, with the identification of risk, the management of those who pose harm, and the proactive pursuit of offenders placed firmly at the centre of the response. This would represent a much needed, important shift away from previous approaches that have, understandably, focused on the inevitability of VAWG and mitigating its impact, toward disrupting and preventing harm at source.


Tackling VAWG at scale requires the same level of ambition and commitment seen in the Serious Violence Duty, with a robust, system-wide approach, where all partners are brought together, engaged, and held to account. We hope current challenges and ambitions in the criminal justice system and wider public sector have been factored into the priorities set out in this strategy. This should go beyond marginal improvements and instead drive meaningful change across systems, cultures, and operational practice, recognising that no single agency can address this issue in isolation. The success of the London Lighthouse, on which Childhouse is predicated, is largely owed to an integrated partnership approach. 


Each of the areas of focus require a strategic overview of the context in which any measures will need to be implemented. For example, the pursuit of perpetrators requires a whole criminal justice system response as the ‘front door’ to the system, not just an improvement in policing. The risk is that a greater number of perpetrators are identified and held to account but that the longer term consequences are not enabled through the current criminal justice response, resulting in an increased risk for the victim. 


We hope the strategy fully recognises the changing nature of VAWG, for example, the increase in the volume of children being perpetrators and victims as well as the increase in technology and online platforms used to cause harm. Both demand greater innovation and a full assessment of partners’ capabilities and skills to be adequately addressed. The announcement of the introduction of skilled rape teams into all police forces is a positive sign of recognising that more bespoke skills and resourcing is required.  


We are hopeful that the strategy will enable greater focus on less understood aspects of VAWG, including the online/offline continuum of abuse and the implications this may have on our understanding of victimisation and perpetration. In addition to this, we want the strategy to look to intersections with other national threats. This includes exploring the intersections with counter-terrorism, organised crime, child sexual exploitation, modern slavery, and grooming. A cross-cutting approach is critical to developing effective long term responses. We expect the strategy to adopt a truly holistic public protection approach that reflects the complexity and evolving nature of risk.


Watch this space for our upcoming in-depth analysis in the new year. 




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