The West Yorkshire Combined Authority has published its annual report with some of their headline achievements from across the past year.

The West Yorkshire Combined Authority has published its annual report with updates on initatives tackling violence, drug misuse and vehicle crime among others. 

It’s also the year that has seen the transition of the office from an OPCC to a Combined Authority. The change has been managed by D/Mayor Alison Lowe. 

A key theme of this week's report is partnership working. The MoJ grant funding for the Local Commissioning of Victims’ Support Services for the region was £4.1m. 

The Combined Authority currently fund 106 different providers, with six contracts and 140 grants in place across West Yorkshire. 

An interesting initiative to have come out of a partnership approach has been a Snapchat campaign to prevent ‘money mules’. 

The force worked alongside Leeds Safeguarding Children Partnership to produce the campaign which centres around fake adverts imitating those used by offenders to lure young people into money laundering. 

The ‘money mules’ then transfer stolen money. Instead, however, users who clicked on the fake advert were directed to a specialised information page on the West Yorkshire Police website. 

The initiative had been funded by the Mayor’s Safer Communities Fund. Users were redirected via the advert a total of 25,719 times and spent an average of just under three minutes on the information page. 

Meanwhile, VAWG has been a key focus of the Crime and Policing team. In December last year, the force began recording instances of misogyny within reports of hate crime. Victims are now asked whether they feel the incident was motivated by their sex. 

Officers will also record instances of misandry in the same way. 

The force has further committed to a pilot programme running a Stalking Coordination Unit. It will run for 12 months with the aim of identifying areas of improvement with the stalking response. 

Mayor Tracy Brabin said: “This Annual Report for 2021-2022 reviews many of the highlights and achievements of this first year working within the Combined Authority; work which has included a major extension to the provision of support for victims of domestic and sexual violence; an extensive programme of community focused (and in some cases, co-produced) early intervention projects under the Violence Reduction Unit; and targeted projects to create safer neighbourhoods before, and after, dark.

“We want to inspire partners in public, health, community, and academic sectors, all of whom have a role to play in building a safe, just, and inclusive West Yorkshire.”