One thousand reports of violence against women and girls are being reported in Hertfordshire every month – with just five per cent of alleged perpetrators being charged and appearing before a court, according to the chief constable of Hertfordshire Police.

Chief Constable Charlie Hall sat down with recently-elected Tory Police and Crime Commissioner Jonathan Ash-Edwards for their first 'accountability and performance' meeting on Friday, July 18. The meeting allows the commissioner to ask questions of the chief constable and to hold them to account.

Asked about charge rates and patterns of offending, Ch Con Hall said: "This is not straightforward because the way we record crimes is against Home Office crime categories and they don't specifically set out a violence against women and girls category, because the offending there could be captured under many different crime headings.

"Violent crimes, harassment offences, public order offences, and the like.

"So, we do try and track across all our crime categories where it appears that it's an offence or a report to us that would be violence against women and girls [in a] broader grouping. When we do that, it looks like within the constabulary we are recording in the region of 1,000 offences per month that relate to violence against women and girls.

"That sounds like a big number, it is a big number. It's far too big for what we would wish to see. If we could track that over five years, it has reduced slightly. Still got a long way to go. The figure within that is not quite as significant as it was, but 1,000 is still a lot.

"Within those, there will be a lot of what we call our safeguarding work that takes place to try and protect victims, to try and encourage them to follow the criminal justice process through. Not all of our victims will wish to do that and if they don't, we absolutely work to ensure there is some safeguarding activity that's wrapped around them to try and prevent them becoming or continuing to be victims in that way.

"In terms of that figure, the number that we are formally managing to charge and get before a court, it sits just above five per cent at the moment. That's nowhere near sufficient, I want to try and lift them but there's a whole complex set of reasons behind why that can be challenging and difficult to get those cases before a court.

"I would encourage any woman or girl who is experiencing these issues to report them to us. Even if it's ultimately not your wish to go before a court, we might talk to you and see if there are other ways we can do that. In some cases, we're able to pursue what we call victim non-supported prosecutions where we can take the decision and the evidence is such that we're able to put a [case] to court without the victim's involvement as such. We think that's important because we do know there is a cohort of people, sadly, who do tend to move from one victim to another.

"At the very least we will risk assess all those situations and take appropriate safeguarding action."

Mr Ash-Edwards said: "Thank you, that's really useful and they're really stark figures actually. One thousand offences a month is horrendous and something that we'll need to really keep a close eye on, because the constabulary is really focused on trying to drive those [offences] down and drive charge rates up. But the real priority for me will be part of the Police and Crime Plan later in the year.

"I want to pick up on what you've just referred to of some of that pattern of behaviour and offending. How are repeat patterns of abusive behaviour amongst perpetrators beign identified and addressed?"

Ch Con Hall said: "We collect a lot of data in the organisation and I've got an intelligence team that sits on an analytical team and one of the things they do is work through that data's wealth. Also, when people call in to us, one of the checks that we will do, when we ask them 'Have you experienced behaviour like this previously?', we will also check our systems for previous calls

Certainly for domestic disputes, we use a risk assessment tool… which is a set of question that we work through with people who are reporting victims…"

Ch Con Hall also pointed to a wide range of services available through the Hertfordshire Beacon Victim Care Centre.

Mr Ash-Edwards had first raised the issue of violence against women and girls, pointing to it as one of his priorities during his election.

Ch Con Hall said: "As you rightly say, this is a really important priority for us, not only here but nationally and we've all seen some of the headlines around this.

"Sadly, this does make up a fairly sizeable portion of our demand, and we recognise that we need to be able to drive the offending down and offer more safety and reassurance to women and girls."

Ch Con Hall spent some time talking about "expectations" of officers, although he was unspecific about what this meant and Mr Ash-Edwards did not ask him.

The chief constable said: "So it is very squarely set as a priority in what we call our force control strategy, which sets out the key areas that policing in Hertfordshire should be prioritising.

"This is right in the middle of that and there's nobody in the force who can or should be under any doubt that this is a clear expectation for them, whichever part of the organisation you're in, delivering operational service, you will be well aware that this is an area you're expected to pay attention to.

"Indeed over the last few weeks, I've been meeting large sections of the workforce, 500 or so at a time, trying to cover everybody, effectively, who works for us. We've spent a really good amount of time talking about expectations and how to deal with this."