In April 2021, the Home Office (HO) announced that 18 police forces with the highest levels of serious violence (SV) would receive funding to deliver enhanced hot spot policing. The aim of this programme, called Grip, is to deter SV through visible patrol activity in hot spots whilst also adopting strategic problem-oriented policing to address the root causes of violence within those locations. In September 2021, 2 further police forces were awarded bespoke funding to conduct hot spot policing in the same way as the Grip-funded forces, as they had the next highest volumes of SV. As far as could be determined, this makes it one of the largest attempts to implement and measure hot spot policing ever.

The same 20 forces now have a multi-year Grant Agreement (years ending 31 March 2023 to 2024) to deliver the hot spot policing programme, making this the first in a possible series of evaluations capturing the effects. This report covers the year ending 31 March 2022 only.