Decisions

As part of the second phase of the mayor’s IsThisOK? Campaign, a preliminary campaign phase will be delivered to supplement the existing contract and campaign raising awareness of coercive and controlling behaviour before delivering the rest of a pre-agreed contract, awarded to Agent Marketing previously.

GMCA is seeking to award Agent Marketing £26,832 to provide an additional, preliminary phase to the gender-based violence public campaign. This would be delivered via a contract variation, varying an existing contract already in place with Agent Marketing.

The reasons for the decision are:
Chambers of Commerce:
At the most recent GM Contest Board, it was reported that there had been a 70% increase in Prevent referrals of which most were ‘violence fixated’ rather than being led by a particular ideology.

This was further discussed at the May 2025 Police and Crime Leads meeting where Community Safety Leads supported the idea of a Round Table event, in order to better understand the issues locally, the National policy direction and intervention, provision and resource implications. To this end, the Deputy Mayor has agreed to facilitate and chair an in person Round Table on the issue, attended by senior LA Prevent, Channel and CSP leads, and senior representatives of partner organisations, such as GMP, CTPNW, Probation and others.

The Round Table will cover:

a. Volume of referral and cohort profiles
b. National policy direction
d. Governance
e. Support and interventions for individuals.

The Safer Stronger Communities team will make the following payment to GM Chambers of Commerce:

Chambers of Commerce:
A payment to be made of £480.00 to book a room at GM Chambers of Commerce, Manchester for 45 attendees to host the June 2025 GM Prevent & Serious Violence roundtable chaired by the Deputy Mayor. This booking is for all morning. No space within GMCA is available on this date to accommodate meeting attendees.

Advanced manufacturing originating in Oldham with environmental benefits and export potential. The company recycles industrial waste that would otherwise end up in land-fill sites. The adoption of advanced manufacturing techniques will help the business to increase product output and the amount of PVC it recycles.

The Combined Authority gave approval on 28 March 2025 to give delegated authority to the Combined Authority Chief Executive and the Combined Authority Treasurer, in consultation with the Portfolio Lead Leader for Investment and Resources, to approve funding requests for projects in the absence of a Combined Authority meeting at the end of April 2025 and approve any urgent variations on amounts and terms for already approved loans.

Approve a £500,000 loan to Heyside Plastics Limited, in order toto support the business in its transition to implementing more advanced manufacturing processes.

In line with the GM Complex Safeguarding Strategy 2024-2027 (Priority 1 – Implementation of the Tackling Child Exploitation Principles) and the interim conclusions provided by HMICFRS during Part 4 of the GM CSE assurance review, a new peer review programme has been piloted with Manchester and Wigan, and has started to be rolled out across GM.

To embed the voices of survivors within the feedback, and ensure it is at the heart of proposed systemic changes, we are commissioning the Reign Collective to be part of our Peer Review Panel. Through the lens of their lived experience, they will support local authorities to finetune their action plan and secure better outcomes for young people.

This initial payment will cover the self-assessment of the two pilot areas. Further payment will be made at a later date for the following 8 areas

GMCA Complex Safeguarding wishes to pay £600 from the Complex Safeguarding Budget for The Reign Collective to take part in our revised GM Peer Review Programme.

The Deputy Mayor has committed to provide an agreed amount of financial support to both Adult and Children’s Safeguarding boards in 2025/26

The ten Local Safeguarding Boards for Children and the ten local Safeguarding Boards for Adults will receive a payment as set out in the schedule below. Total value £351,635. This increased allocation includes an inflationary uplift of 2.6%.

The work of the Safeguarding Boards will support GMP through the Strategic Vulnerability Board and at a local level in the areas of:

• Support the delivery of the GMP Child Centred Policing Strategy
• Shared Data Insights - MFH data for children and young people /care homes. We currently don’t have the specific details for children and young people's homes between 16 and 18 and would value more data from partners.
• Shared Training through safeguarding boards with local practitioners. This will upskill police officers and neighbourhood teams at a place level.
• SCR reviews - learning and continual improvement.

In view of this the Deputy Mayor has agreed to make a 12-month payment to Safeguarding Boards for the period April 2025– March 2026.

The GM Schools Competition encourages young people to creatively explore how to raise awareness of and prevent child exploitation amongst their peers, utilising technology/digital tools. The aim of this project is to amplify young voices, to support them to present innovative ideas, and to work jointly with them to shape real-world solutions inspired by those directly affected by child exploitation.

The final event on Thursday 8th May will be an opportunity for the selected finalist teams to pitch their project ideas “dragon-den style”. The students will face a panel of judges, composed of the Deputy Mayor, the Co-director of the Institute for Children’s Futures, the Co-Director of the Reign Collective, a lived experience-led organisation, and 2 young leaders from Unity Radio who have recently been involved in a youth voice project in partnership with children open to Manchester Complex Safeguarding Team.

By involving young people in the Panel, but also in the audience and as team finalists, we are ensuring that this event is truly youth-led.

GMCA Complex Safeguarding wishes to pay £100 to Unity Radio for them to support two young people to be involved in our GM Schools’ Competition Final event, as judges on our panel.

Community Safety Partnerships are in the final year of a three-year agreement. The Deputy Mayor has agreed a 2.6% uplift to the grants in recognition of inflationary pressures and the governments safer streets mission.

The decision and conditions covering the three-year agreement, remains in place. This decision covers the change to the allocations in 2025-26.

In the final year of the current three-year grant agreement, the 2025-26 allocations will be increased by 2.6%. This represents an increase of £102,800 to the Deputy Mayor. Details of each allocation are included int he Background papers.

The new amounts are set out below, paid as an advance payment:

• Community Safety Grant
• Voluntary and Community Sector Grant
• Hate Crime Grant

These payments, are dependent upon:

• Receipt of financial monitoring reports in each year with no unallocated underspends exceeding £15,000 in total.

• District Community Safety Partnership approval of the grant agreement in each year.

• Confirmation of the approval of the spending proposals by the district Community Safety Partnership as part of the local governance process, with quarterly updates, thereafter, shared with the GMCA and a financial report be provided to GMCA in February of each year with actual spend to January and projected spend to March of that financial year.

STEER provides one to one mentoring for young people aged 10-17 at risk of serious youth violence and child criminal exploitation across Salford, Bolton, Wigan, Trafford, Tameside & Manchester. Utilising specifically designed interventions and positive activities, it aims to “steer” young people down a legitimate path helping to improve resilience, motivation and reduce risk taking behaviours. Mentors support each young person to create their own plan and set goals. They also help young people to improve pro-social skills and develop coping mechanisms.

STEER transitioned from a pilot study to an efficacy study in 2023, a positive progression through the defined stages of YEF that all YEF commissions are subject to. Progression is not guaranteed and was a marker of the project’s success. However, almost all YEF programmes are subject to a cessation of funding for a period of 12 months or longer at the end of the efficacy study before transition to an effectiveness stage is approved. The STEER programme reached the end of its efficacy stage on 31st March 2025, and despite engagement between the Deputy Mayor and YEF to highlight the dangers of ceasing funding for any period, YEF will cease funding until they confirm the effectiveness stage can begin. YEF ceases funding for programmes at the conclusion of the efficacy study to allow for results to be collated and assessed to inform and influence the effectiveness stage. Therefore, this £84,000 grant funding seeks to match fund contributions from Salford Foundation’s own reserves to continue the STEER programme in all 6 districts in which it currently operates until the effectiveness stage can begin. The VRU’s contribution includes £7,000 from the devolved funding budgets of each of the 6 districts in which STEER operates.

GMCA (Violence Reduction Unit) wish to award Salford Foundation £84,000 via a grant funding agreement to fund a continuation of delivery for the STEER programme delivered across 6 districts of Greater Manchester in financial year 2025/26 following cessation of funding from the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF).

The Programme Challenger Board is the executive function of the Programme Challenger partnership in Greater Manchester. Membership of the Challenger Board comprises senior managers from key partners from the public and third sectors. The Challenger Board scrutinises partnership progress against the implementation of the Greater Manchester Serious and Organised Crime strategy and provides strategic assistance to the Programme Challenger partnership in respect of delivery of the Challenger action plan.

The Board directs the activity of its working groups and monitors activity of other governance groups that report into the Board. Members commit to ensuring that the work of Challenger features on other strategic and executive partnership boards across Greater Manchester, including safeguarding boards and community safety partnerships across the ten districts.

In 2023, the board underwent a review and one of the recommendations arising was to recruit a dedicated independent chair to drive its agenda. A competitive tender process was run, and Elizabeth Jenkins was recruited into the role for a fixed term period of 2 years. Elizabeth is a senior solicitor with a wealth of experience, and the Programme Challenger team- and wider board- wish to retain Elizabeth for a further 2 years

GMCA Safer & Stronger Communities (Programme Challenger team) wish to recommission Elizabeth Jenkins as independent chair of the Programme Challenger Executive Board for a further 2 years from June 2025 to June 2027. This recommission would be via a new 2 year contract to commence upon expiry of the current 2 year contract. Costs for the 2 year contract will be the same as the previous contract; £20,400.

The reasons for the decision are:
Stronger Without aims to help Greater Manchester schools, colleges, and other education and youth providers create pathways within their curriculum and activities that remove any need for young people to consider carrying a knife. This aligns with the Home Office’s ambition to reduce knife crime by 50% over the next decade.

The first stage of work in the Summer term focuses on engaging stakeholders with the ‘Stronger Without’ concept. At its core, ‘Stronger Without’ means stronger without knives – and ultimately, without the need for knife arches and wands.

When this initial phase is complete, the next stage would involve commissioning a pilot, which would require training, meetings with staff, and engagement with local authority officers.

‘Stronger Without’ starts with a blank canvas to develop the influence, persuasion, relationships, and networks to drive change in the education system led by the VRU.

The Greater Manchester Violence Reduction Unit are seeking to make a payment of £3000.00 to Glynn Potts (former headteacher of Newman College, a high school in Oldham) to co-lead stakeholder engagement for the VRU’s 2025 ‘Stronger Without’ programme.

The Programme Challenger Board is the executive function of the
Programme Challenger partnership in Greater Manchester. Membership of the Challenger Board comprises senior managers from key partners from the public and third sectors. The Challenger Board scrutinises partnership progress against the implementation of the Greater Manchester Serious and Organised Crime strategy and provides strategic assistance to the Programme Challenger partnership in respect of delivery of the Challenger action plan.

The Board directs the activity of its working groups and monitors activity of other governance groups that report into the Board. Members commit to ensuring that the work of Challenger features on other strategic and executive partnership boards across Greater Manchester, including safeguarding boards and community safety partnerships across the ten districts. The board is chaired by an independent chair. This meeting serves as the second quarterly meeting of the board in 2025 and will also function as an away day for board members to workshop priorities and actionable outcomes for the next 12 months of board delivery.

The Safer Stronger Communities team are seeking to make the following payment to GM Chambers of Commerce:

Chambers of Commerce:
A payment to be made of £835.00 to book a room at GM Chambers of Commerce, Manchester to host the June 2025 quarterly meeting of the Programme Challenger Exec Board. This booking is for all day, including lunch, as board members will participate in an away day during the afternoon to workshop priorities for the following 12 months with an external facilitator. No space within GMCA is available on this date to accommodate meeting attendees.

The GM Schools Competition encourages young people to creatively explore how to raise awareness of and prevent child exploitation amongst their peers, utilising technology/digital tools. The aim of this project is to amplify young voices, to support them with presenting innovative ideas, and to work jointly with them to shape real-world solutions inspired by those directly affected by child exploitation.

The Deputy Mayor will host the finals event on Thursday, May 8th at Manchester Metropolitan University so the winning team can be selected. This winning team will receive a grant of £2000 for the implementation of their idea and will meet with Andy Burnham in person to discuss taking the next steps forward.

Programme Challenger would like to allocate a maximum of £2000 to make purchases to support the delivery of the Greater Manchester Schools Competition Finals event on 8th May 2025.

In October 2024, the Deputy Mayor approved that The Big Life Group be awarded £72,157 as the lead provider for the provision of the ‘Pick Up at The Gate’ Wellbeing pilot for a 12-month period from the 1 September 2024 to 31 August 2025.

As the lead provider, The Big Life Group agreed to provide in-house triage support for referrals from pre-release Probation Practitioners before transferring transport facilitation to On the Out, a local Community Interest Company (nonprofit) helping former prisoners overcome barriers and challenges on release.

On the Out actively recruit and employ ex-prisoners to support other ex – prisoners ensuring they occupy positions of leadership and influence using a thorough recruitment process to manage risk. They require evidence of positive behaviour, avoid hiring individuals with sexual, hate, or vulnerable person offenses, and do not employ those actively in addiction. References and Probation Practitioner permission are required for those on the licence. Enhanced DBS checks and risk assessments are conducted, with no lone work allowed until checks are complete. New employees undergo induction and shadowing to ensure competency.

The vetting procedure for all providers working with HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) involves several key steps to ensure security and suitability. However, some of the On the Out support workers identified to facilitate transport on the day of release have not cleared vetting to enable the access and security required. As a result, The Big Life Group will provide extra support and resilience to cover staff holidays and sickness.

This has increased the cost of the service from £72,157 to £91,912.97 and additional funding of £19,655.97 is required and has been agreed between Big Life and GM HMPPS.

The Big Life Group be awarded an additional £19,655.97 as the lead provider for the provision of the ‘Pick Up at The Gate’ Wellbeing pilot.

The key focus of the VRU’s Community Led Programmes is ensuring that young people and stakeholders in a specific locality or place come together, focussing on a strength-based approach in the pilot sites to identify what work is already taking place, what gaps may exist and what the opportunities might be to address these gaps. Key to this approach is harnessing and building on existing strengths and capacity from within the community to develop projects and activities.

The programme is co-ordinated by a VCSE Sector Strategic Lead (Michael Phipps) who is working with Public Sector and VCSE sector partners to deliver the programme and is based within the GM VRU.
This programme is about working with communities to find solutions to problems that exist in their area. Investment is important and there is funding available to develop and deliver solutions that communities define and collectively agree on. The key priority is about building trust with communities and acting upon their challenges and ideas through prioritising a range of shared actions. To date, the CLP is operating in all 10 areas of GM.

As part of the recently approved implementation plan for the Greater Than Violence strategy, a new, quarterly, in person ‘action network’ is being scoped. The network will transform the VRU’s approach to working with and for communities. Given the objectives of the Greater Than Violence Strategy, broad representation is a pre-requisite, including substantial VCFSE voices. This would be known as the VRU Action Network. The learning from this will be fed into the governance board and back into the programme as a whole. The recommendations from the 2023 'Experts by Experience' programme are ultimately achieved via this project.

The extra payment of £5,984.00 has arisen due to the fact that this work was originally intended to run for 10 weeks but has instead continued to run at half a day a week between 16/10/2024 and 31/03/2025. This is owing to the complexity of setting up a new GM Action Network that fits the terms of reference envisaged by the VRU’s strategy implementation plan and sufficiently embeds the voice of lived experience into the work of the network.

The GM VRU are seeking to fund Bolton Community Voluntary Sector (CVS) the amount of £5,984 for continued support in development of a VRU Action Network provided by x2 colleagues at Bolton CVS to be paid via standard GMCA purchase order procedure (not grant funding).

The reasons for the decision are:

GMCA has seen success in their criminal justice and offender management approach, including high desistance rates in the IOM cohort. However, there is still high demand from those already in the criminal justice system. GMCA aims to act quickly for this cohort through a whole system approach, including a single front door for services, a peer support delivery model, and the potential to become a centre of excellence for other regions.
To achieve this, GMCA needs to understand the cost impact of the revolving door cohort (prolific, often acquisitive crime low-level offenders with high unmet needs) on their criminal justice services: police, courts, prisons, and probation. This understanding will help GMCA articulate a business case for interventions that divert people away from or out of the criminal justice system. This needs to be completed by the end of May to be included in the GMCA Spending Review submission to Government.
Newton and Xantura have partnered with the criminal justice reform charity Revolving Doors to highlight the impact and costs of failing to meet the needs of the ‘revolving door’ cohort—people who have frequent contact with the criminal justice system. This work has already revealed the extent of unmet needs among this cohort and the potential benefits of earlier or more flexible interventions.
Newton and Xantura have delivered a range of criminal justice assessments and programmes, working alongside HMPPS and MoJ senior leaders. They also collaborate across the public sector, including local authorities and health systems in Greater Manchester.
The scope of this project involves utilising existing GMCA-held and open-source data to develop an indicative assessment of the cost impact of the prolific offender cohort. This will be supplemented by Newton/Xantura held data and insights about the characteristics of the revolving door cohort to enhance GMCA’s existing perspective.
Additionally, the project will outline the potential benefits of various interventions for this cohort. The allocated budget for this initiative is £49,999, with a completion deadline set for the end of May.
The total anticipated costs are expected to exceed £250,000, with Newton and Xantura committed to covering any additional expenses beyond the initial budget. Further details regarding costs and investment will be provided as scoping and contracting discussions progress.
A key outcome of this project is for other HMPPS regions to learn from GMCA's success and implement similar strategies to reduce the cost impact of the revolving door cohort. This will inform decisions on the effectiveness and scalability of interventions, promoting best practices across regions.

Newton and Xantura will conduct a cost impact analysis on the revolving door cohort by combining their held data and insights about the characteristics of this cohort to supplement GMCA’s existing view, at a cost of £49,999.

Operation Soteria was developed in response to national concern around the investigation of rape and sexual assault offences and the increasing epidemic that is violence against women and girls.

Its aim is to increase the number of adult rape and serious sexual assault cases reaching charge, and, in addition, deliver sustained improvement in the criminal justice whole system response.

The programme combines practitioner knowledge with that of academic experts, along with research insight and transformational change support to forces. This has led to the development of the first National Operating Model for the investigation of rape and serious sexual offences.

Investigating rape is complex. It is one of the few crimes where a life sentence can be given. It is recognised that GMP investigators often lack the knowledge, skills, and experience to effectively deal with such complex, trauma-based crime.

The decision is that:

The Deputy Mayor has agreed an envelope of funding to the value of £1.1M to support the delivery of Operation Soteria within GMP, with the purpose of:

• To improve investigative outcomes for Victims in Rape and Serious Sexual Offences
• Develop an environment for change to enable the future implementation of the National Operating Model

Operation Soteria - High level allocation of funding to end of March 2025:
Deputy Mayor Allocation - £1100000

TOTAL expenditure and agreed allocation, 2023/24, 2024/25, 2025/26 = £355,067

Funding to be agreed, £744,933

£744,933 – The allocation of the remaining funding to be agreed through a separate decision notice and business cases to the Deputy Mayor.