Government’s landmark VAWG strategy published

The government has today (18th December 2025) published its long-awaited violence against women and girls (VAWG) strategy, following its ambitious manifesto commitment to halve this abuse within a decade.

The End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW) welcomes the publication of this strategy, the first of its kind under the Labour government. This is an important milestone in our mission to build a world where women and girls are free from violence and abuse.

Welcome focus on prevention

It is really positive to see a much needed focus on prevention. We welcome plans to better support and upskill teachers to deliver vital education on healthy relationships and tackle misogyny in schools, alongside funding to support the role of specialists in this work.

However, we are concerned that the funding allocated to a teacher training pilot (£3 million) will barely touch the surface of the additional infrastructure needed within schools to really tackle the issues at hand. There is already a huge amount of work going on in schools by specialist VAWG services (including by many EVAW members) which will inform the evidence base in the pilot programme, and we hope lead to much wider expansion of this vital work.

While we are pleased to see that the Minister of Skills is exploring how mandatory relationships and sex education for 16-18 year olds can be introduced, the strategy itself evidences the need for urgency in making this a reality.

Need for more work to address inequalities

We would expect a violence against women and girls strategy to be grounded in the principles of respecting human rights and addressing the inequalities that underpin VAWG, in recognition of the specific harms experienced by Black and minoritised women and girls.

To this end, along with specialist organisations led ‘by and for’ marginalised women, we had called for a more robust firewall for migrant survivors that would meaningfully ensure data is not shared with immigration enforcement.

We are also concerned about measures which weaponise VAWG to pass restrictive immigration policies, erode rights under the European Convention on Human Rights, or increase levels of state surveillance.

Online abuse

 We are concerned that the strategy’s approach to tackling online VAWG focuses heavily on criminalisation measures, without taking a broader systems-based approach to regulating the platforms that promote and profit from abuse. We will maintain pressure on government to ensure that tech companies are held accountable for abuse of women and girls, in particular through making Ofcom’s VAWG guidance a mandatory Code of Practice; as while the strategy includes reference to image-based sexual abuse, there is an absence of detail on how it proposes to actually fix it.

Funding

The range of funding commitments announced is welcome, as this will afford life changing and life saving specialist support services a greater degree of certainty and ability to resource response to growing demand. We remain deeply concerned by the ongoing funding challenges faced by the specialist VAWG sector which is on its knees after years of chronic under-funding, a reality that has been made worse by the significant delays to this strategy.

We call on the government to make their commitments to reforming the commissioning process swift and effective, and ensure there are no further delays in frontline services getting the funding they need so as to ensure no more survivors are turned away, and no more expert staff made redundant. This must include ringfenced funding for specialist services led ‘by and for’ Black and minoritised women.

Cross-government action

There are a huge number of actions noted in the plan – some more tangible than others, and many that we welcome. It is the most cross-governmental strategy we have seen to date: finally bringing health to the table, recognising the harm of online abuse and including actions under transport and education as well as police and justice. We will be working now to support the strategy’s implementation and monitor the potential and pitfalls of the proposed plans.

Andrea Simon, Director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW), said:

“We applaud the focus on education as the cornerstone of any plan that aims to halve VAWG in a decade. Prevention is always better than waiting to respond after harm is done.

We are keen to see young people finally get the relationships and sex education they deserve, and for the attitudes that underpin harmful behaviours to be challenged and explored at the collective level, through education and awareness-raising, rather than interventions focusing on singling out individuals. 

Tackling gender inequality not only benefits women and girls but all of society. It is essential that these plans are informed by the expertise of the specialist VAWG sector. We look forward to working with the government to build on the proposals laid out today.” 

We will be applying our Five Key Tests to the VAWG Strategy in the new year when we have had an opportunity to carry out in-depth analysis of all of the detail contained within it. 

While we will fully digest and analyse the many measures contained in the strategy, here is a topline summary of the announcements made so far:

EDUCATION & BEHAVIOUR CHANGE

• Multi-year public communications campaign. EVAW have long called for this as it is a well-established effective way of changing the attitudes that underpin VAWG.
• £20m for prevention measures in education, including £3m for initial teacher training, £8m innovation fund and £5m for specialist providers. We welcome plans to support and upskill teachers to tackle misogyny and teach about healthy relationships in schools; however the funding falls far short of what is needed.
• Behaviour change programmes in schools and a young person’s helpline for those worried about their own behaviour. We await further details of these announcements, but it is important that they are informed by the expertise from the specialist VAWG sector and focus on preventative education from an early age. It is also important that interventions are not too individualistic, and instead tackled at the systemic and collective level.

FUNDING

• £550 million in multi-year victims funding from the Ministry of Justice. We warmly welcome this much needed funding, however we wait to hear more details regarding how much of this will go specifically to VAWG services.
• This is also accompanied by funding commitments from other departments including an additional £19 million from MHCLG across 3 years for safe accommodation (in addition to the £480 million committed by Local Government), and £5 million from DHSC.
• Reform how victims’ services are commissioned to ensure that support is consistent, delivers what victims and survivors need, and is fit for purpose.
• £50 million funding to expand Child House models
• A new referral service to connect victims with specialist help through their GP

ONLINE

• Banning of nudification apps. This is a welcome first step, but how this will work in reality remains unknown and much more needs to be done to tackle online VAWG focused on prevention and safety-by-design.
• £2 million for police squads made up of covert investigators to target online abusers. Online offending remains poorly understood by police forces. We need to see more detail on what these online VAWG units entail, and are cautious of any undercover police activity. We are clear that all police units need training and specialism in online VAWG.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

• Rollout of Rape and Serious Sexual Offense (RASSO) units in every police force in England & Wales. This is a welcome and much needed step, as currently many rape victims are dealing with non-specialist officers with insufficient experience, leading to poor and often re-traumatising experiences and an increasing number of victims withdrawing from the justice process. These units must be implemented without delay, amidst concerns that they won’t be fully in place until 2029.
• Expansion of Clare’s Law – the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme (DVDS) – to other forms of VAWG. We welcome this, however we know that the DVDS is not working effectively everywhere, with a need to improve how the police share information and respond to requests quickly if the scheme is to be rolled out across other forms of VAWG.
• Domestic Abuse Protection Orders (DAPO) will be expanded to other forms of VAWG. This has the potential to be positive for protecting women and children, but will rely on more effective implementation, monitoring and response by police forces than is currently the case.