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 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 Statistics:

• Nottingham City Police received 11,304 reports of Domestic Violence in 08/09.
• There were 133,235 women living in Nottingham City at the end of March 2009.
• If the above statistics are applied to the number of women in Nottingham, then 33,309 women of these women will suffer from Domestic Abuse at some point in their lives and 13,324 women will be experiencing Domestic abuse today (NHS Nottingham City 2009).
• Approximately 10,920 women in Nottingham City are currently experiencing domestic violence. (Nottingham CDRP: 2005).
• According to Nottingham City Council and Greater Nottingham Housing strategy, 31% of all family homelessness applications identified domestic violence to be the main reason for homelessness. (Nottingham CDRP: 2005).
• Nottinghamshire Social Services reported in June 2004 that domestic violence featured in a third of all child protection assessments. Nottingham City Social Services report that domestic violence is the principal reason for a third of all child protection case conferences. (Nottinghamshire Children’s Fund: 2005).

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.  Nottingham City Police received 11,304 reports of Domestic Violence in 08/09 against a target of 8,577.

Nottingham Women's Aid data: There were 16,000 calls to the 24hour Nottinghamshire Domestic Violence Helpline run by WAAC in 2008.

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)