Emergency funding has been made available to help cover the additional costs faced by domestic abuse and sexual violence services in Suffolk during the coronavirus pandemic

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has secured £25 million as part of a £76m package for charities supporting vulnerable people.

Suffolk’s Police and Crime Commissioner encouraged providers to work swiftly to submit applications before the 5pm deadline on June 1.

The £25m pot is ring-fenced for Covid-19 related emergency funding and designed to meet the extra costs incurred by domestic abuse and sexual violence services while adapting to the crisis – and to cope with resulting increased demand – between March 24 and October 31.

The MOJ will also provide an extra £3m to PCCs specifically to fund Independent Sexual Violence Advisers (ISVAs) until 2022.

Police and Crime Commissioner, Tim Passmore said: “Each year, we allocate significant amounts of money to support victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence, and I know many of the organisations that provide this support are having to find new ways of interacting with victims during this pandemic, which can be more costly than normal.

“I am very pleased that we have been given this additional funding but the MoJ timescales are very tight, so I would encourage providers to work swiftly to get their applications back to us before the deadline.

“I also hope to encourage applications from small specialist organisations that support groups with protected characteristics; organisations that we may not have supported previously.”

Funding could be used to address short term income disruption, meet essential costs of sustaining current activities and address increased demand.

Visit suffolk-pcc.gov.uk/ for full details of how to apply.

The funding is in addition to the extra £10m for domestic abuse safe accommodation charities announced by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, as well as £2m for national and regional community-based domestic abuse charities announced by the Home Office.

The government also said it would be spearheading a new code-word scheme to allow domestic abuse victims in danger to get help from shop workers by using a specific phrase that staff will be trained to identify.