A Frustrating Anniversary

So, we have just reached a frustrating anniversary. The consultation on ‘Updating the domestic homicide review statutory guidance’ opened on 1 May 2024. But now, a year later, we have had no consultation response. So, we’ve no idea what stakeholders said or any indication about what comes next for the statutory guidance. This delay means three things for the review system and leaves:

1. Necessary fixes undone.

2. More ambitious changes to ensure a sustainable review system as a speck on the horizon.

3. A fairly general sense that the review system is in limbo.

This delay is an example of what I’ve called ‘temporal peril’ in terms of the reliance on the U.K. government (in the shape of the Home Office) for oversight of the domestic homicide / abuse-related death review system. This question of the national and local framework for the review system is something I explore in my recently published book called 'The Potential and Peril of Reviewing Domestic Abuse-Related Deaths'.

Delays like this are not just an abstract question; they impact both confidence in the review system and the quality of reviews. Critically, though, these delays affect the experiences of stakeholders. Most notably, they affect families, who often still have to endure, for example, unacceptable timelines for the conclusion of reviews.

At this stage, I think the only way forward is to embody the spirit of review when it comes to how we progress reform. This is something I, along with Elizabeth Cook and Sarah Dangar, called for in our response to the consultation on the statutory guidance.

In the same way we ask those involved in a case review to take part in an open and honest accounting, we need the Home Office and the U.K. government to be willing to reflect on their leadership to date and then work with stakeholders to have a genuine dialogue about how we got here and where next. Any reform will be piecemeal at best without that kind of reckoning. That’s not right by victims, their families and others who knew someone who has died or been killed, or those professionals and policy makers who work so hard to try and learn from domestic abuse-related deaths.