24 Hour Domestic Violence Help-line

To access specific research documents or statistics on domestic violence please register as a member.  This page briefly outlines some of the facts and figures about domestic violence both nationally and in a local context.  Most of these statistics have been provided by the British Crime Survey 2004 or from reports produced by the Nottingham City Domestic Violence Policy Officer.  Statistics for the County are harder to extrapolate as collation is on a district rather than Countywide basis and there is no common monitoring system in place.

What do we know from the British Crime Survey: Domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking: 2004

• Domestic violence is reported as being widespread for women and men (36%) however a minority, largely women suffer multiple attacks, severe injuries and disruption to their lives.
• 45% of women and 26% of men identified that they had experienced at least one incident of domestic violence in their lives.
• 89% of those subject to 4 or more incidents of abuse were women compared with 11% of men.
• Partner or ex-partners raped 54% of women who are raped
• Strangers raped 17% of women who are raped
• For 63% of women domestic violence stops when they leave their partners and 78% of men
• Violence continues for 37% of women who have left their partners and 22% of men
• 23% of cases of domestic violence are reported to the police
• Police response includes, arrest in 21% of cases, 10% of perpetrators were sent to court, the police spoke to 42% of the perpetrators. In 29% of cases the police did not arrest, speak to the offender or send them to court.

Nottingham Police data: The Police report domestic violence as 25% of all violent crime in Nottingham; the national average. The government recognises that there is an under reporting of domestic violence nationally. Between April 04 and March 05 there were 6,123 reports of domestic violence to the police in Nottingham.

Nottingham Women's Aid data: In 2004 / 05 there were 11, 893 calls to the Women's Aid Advice Centre 24 hour free phone helpline. Of these approximately 1,500 were requests for refuge.

Domestic violence and the costs to health service: Professor Walby’s 2004 research commissioned by the DTI found that the cost of domestic violence to Health Services is 3% of their annual budget. Costs attributable to domestic violence for Nottingham Primary Care Trust will be in the region of 12 million.

Costs of domestic violence to Nottingham Social Services :‘In at least 40% of cases there is a concurrence of domestic violence and child abuse. Domestic violence is present in the Social Services caseload concerning children costing 456 million. Half of this sum may be reasonable, if a conservative estimate of the extent to which the workload to driven by domestic violence. This is 228 million nationally.’ (Walby: 2004)