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SP25

Operation Encompass cross-border extension

Southport Inquiry · The Southport Inquiry Report: Phase 1 · Issued 13 April 2026 · Addressed to: Lancashire Constabulary

Government responseHome Office: Accepted (Jul 2026)

DeliveryNo statement from Lancashire Constabulary found

Recommendation, verbatim from the inquiry

●Inquiry recommendation

Lancashire Constabulary should consider extending Operation Encompass to share automatically relevant information with schools in bordering areas. The Department for Education should consider national implementation. This is because children will not necessarily attend school in the same police force area as they live.

Southport Inquiry, The Southport Inquiry Report: Phase 1 · 13 Apr 2026 Source PDF →

Published evidence summary

AI-generated evidence summary

In July 2026, HM Government accepted the recommendation, stating that statutory guidance already requires all 43 police forces to share domestic abuse notifications across borders under Operation Encompass (Home Office response, Jul 2026). It noted that the Department for Education expected to complete remaining work on other harm types by September 2026 through an information-sharing duty under the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 (Home Office response, Jul 2026). The record holds no update since the government's response of July 2026 (Home Office response, Jul 2026).

Sources

AI-generated summary of the record on this page, checked by a second model and automatic checks, 26 Sep 2026.

Report-level response context

The government's response to Phase 1 (CP 1623, 2 July 2026) agreed with all 67 recommendations in one sentence, and names only 39 of them individually. Where a recommendation is not named, the response shown is the passage the response gives for the group it belongs to (the recommendations for organisations outside central government, or the recommendations to policing bodies), which is not a response to that recommendation alone; the response does not list the members of any group. The 10 recommendations for Phase 2 of the Inquiry to consider show no response: the response introduces them (paragraph 20) but answers none of them. The government accepts the recommendations that are for central government to deliver. Where a recommendation is for an organisation outside central government, the government's agreement is not that organisation's acceptance.

Government response

●Home Office · Accepted · 2 Jul 2026

Words of: HM Government, Government Response to Phase 1 of the Southport Inquiry (CP 1623), presented to Parliament by the Home Secretary, 2 July 2026

The Home Office and the Department for Education (DfE) are working together on this recommendation. Some elements are already complete, and DfE expect to complete the remaining work by September 2026. Progress and next steps:
- In November 2025, Home Office introduced a statutory duty on policing to notify a child's educational setting when they have attended a domestic abuse incident, regardless of whether the child was present. This scheme is known as Operation Encompass.
- The accompanying statutory guidance makes it clear that notifications must be issued, regardless of whether the child resides in a local area that the attending police force does not operate in.
- The scheme is implemented across all 43 police forces in England and Wales, and Home Office is monitoring the implementation with the National Centre for VAWG and Public Protection (NCVPP).
- The statutory duty applies to domestic abuse incidents only.
- In relation to other harm types, DfE has established a new information-sharing duty through the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026. This makes it clear that information must be shared where it is relevant to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, providing a clear legal requirement for safeguarding partners to act decisively and collaboratively. It will commence in September 2026, with a consultation on draft statutory guidance open until 14 July.

Extract from: Government Response to Phase 1 of the Southport Inquiry

Delivery

No statement on delivery from Lancashire Constabulary has been found in the sources searched. This is separate from the response above.

How this page is built

The recommendation and the government responses are verbatim from primary documents. Delivery statements and other bodies' findings are shown in their own words, each with its source. The summary is written by this site and labelled as such. The Index does not paraphrase sources or characterise intent; it records what has been published.