Greater Manchester Hate Crime Plan

Greater Manchester is a place where everyone should feel safe to be themselves. No one should face violence, abuse or hatred just because of who they are, who they love, where they’re from, what they look like or what they believe. Hate incidents and hate crime will not be tolerated in Greater Manchester.

There is a lot of great work taking place to tackle hate crime in each area of Greater Manchester but we think we can be more effective if we work together. So, we are creating the Greater Manchester Plan to Tackle Hate Crime to help prevent and tackle hate crime.

We have worked with many people and organisations involved in tackling hate crime to develop a set of priorities for the Greater Manchester Plan to Tackle Hate Crime. We sought your feedback and experiences to help us to get a better understanding of what is working and what can be improved.

This consultation was open from 16^th October 2019 and ran until 8^th December 2019.

We received 817 responses to this consultation. The majority of these responses were received via the online survey, with a smaller number shared with us directly via email.

There was overall support for the draft priorities to be included within the Plan to Tackle Hate Crime. Around 90% of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed with the draft priorities outlined within the consultation.

A number of responses raised questions relating to gender and sex and there was broad support for the inclusion of hate against women and girls as a monitored strand of hate crime.

When asked about other strands that should be monitored (other than those already monitored and women and girls) age was the next most suggested strand.

30% of respondents were aware of Hate Crime Awareness Week, which runs each February across Greater Manchester. There was a wide range of suggestions for future Hate Crime Weeks the most popular being how to safely challenge hate crime.

A number of important pieces of feedback were given, and we have taken note of these. These included:

• Respondents felt that if people reported hate crime this must be followed by proper support or action from the police.
• Education and work in schools was the most common suggestion for action that should be considered to address hate crime.
• There was broad support for the concept of Third Party Reporting Centres but some questioned how effective they were.

Following early sight of the consultation results we were able to include some key messaging throughout hate crime awareness week around supporting people and not being a bystander when witnessing a hate crime, where it was safe to do so. This messaging appeared at key public transport hubs throughout Greater Manchester where we know such hate incidents occur.

The results of the survey will be shared and reviewed by the Greater Manchester Hate Crime Partnership at the next formal meeting. It has already been agreed that the Partnership will undertake a piece of work to review the operation of Third Party Reporting Centres in Greater Manchester. This work will look to gain a better understanding of the role of the existing centres and provide proposals for the future operation and support network for those centres.

Following the consultation feedback regarding the monitoring of hate crime strands, including age and women and girls which featured strongly in the feedback, the Deputy Mayor will be discussing this with the Chief Constable to gauge the feasibility of recording crimes against other strands. These discussions will focus on the capacity of policing to effectively record and respond to what would be an increased demand.

The feedback will also contribute to towards the ongoing Strategic Review of Victims Services. We want to ensure that the services available to victims are meaningful and effective and understanding the experiences of victims is key to us achieving that.

The results of the survey will be used to develop the draft Plan to Tackle Hate Crime and this will be formally reviewed by the Deputy Mayor and members of the Police and Crime Steering Group before being publically launched in Spring 2020.