In a Ministry of Justice announcement published on 30 September, the department said £4.4 million will be provided for victims' services in Cambridgeshire across the next two years. The funding is being allocated through the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Police and Crime Commissioner and is intended to support victims of all crime types with practical, emotional and therapeutic help. The department placed the award within its wider programme on victims' services and its stated aim to halve violence against women and girls. That framing matters because the local allocation is being presented not as a stand-alone grant, but as part of a broader justice package linked to recovery, access to support and progress through the criminal justice system.
According to the Ministry of Justice, more than £600,000 of the local settlement will go to the Victim and Witness Hub. More than £2.4 million has been ringfenced for domestic and sexual abuse support services, with more than £180,000 of that sum due to go to Peterborough Women's Aid. That breakdown gives a clearer picture of how the funding is meant to operate in practice. A portion is being used to sustain general victim support, while a larger protected share is reserved for specialist services dealing with domestic abuse and sexual violence, where continuity and specialist staffing are often central to delivery.
Victims Minister Alex Davies-Jones visited the PCC Victim and Witness Hub and Peterborough Women's Aid on 30 September, meeting survivors and frontline staff. The official account said she heard directly about how local services support recovery from trauma and help victims navigate the justice system. The visit also served a policy purpose. Ministerial visits of this kind are often used to connect national funding announcements to local delivery and to show how central government expects commissioned services to work on the ground. In this case, the emphasis was on access to support, the quality of frontline provision and the link between recovery services and the justice process.
Darryl Preston, the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Police and Crime Commissioner, used the announcement to stress that the Victim and Witness Hub is open to all victims of crime living in the county, whether or not they report the offence to the police. That is a significant operational point, because it places support access ahead of formal justice system entry. For victims, that can reduce one of the practical barriers to seeking help. It means support can be commissioned as a public service in its own right, rather than only as a follow-on to police reporting, and it allows local providers to work with people who may need assistance before they decide whether to engage with an investigation.
The Cambridgeshire allocation sits inside a larger Ministry of Justice commitment of £550 million for victims and witnesses over the next three years across England and Wales. The department also said £8.7 million of that total has been ringfenced for Rape Crisis England & Wales to continue its 24/7 Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Line. Alongside that settlement, the government said it is investing a further £18.9 million in additional support, including a new free national helpline to be delivered by Victim Support. According to the announcement, that service will provide information, wellbeing and safety advice, and help victims reach the support available to them.
The same press notice linked the funding package to a wider public protection message on sentencing. The government said the Prime Minister has blocked anyone in prison for rape, manslaughter, death by drunk or dangerous driving, serious child sexual offences, historic child sexual offences or grooming from being released under the forthcoming sentencing changes. What the local funding announcement does not set out is the year-by-year split of the £4.4 million, the commissioning timetable or the performance measures that will be used to judge delivery. Those details will matter for scrutiny over the next two years. For now, the immediate effect is greater funding certainty for local services in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, with protected provision for specialist abuse services and continued access routes for victims beyond a police report.