The police head of the UK's national deradicalisation program has urged Australia and other liberal countries to invest in grassroots terrorism prevention, as new figures show the number of far-right-inspired extremism referrals to the scheme have soared.

Key points: Experts say Islamist attacks have distracted people from right-wing extremism

Experts say Islamist attacks have distracted people from right-wing extremism Australia has a prevention program, but it is not funded in the 2018/19 budget

Australia has a prevention program, but it is not funded in the 2018/19 budget Muslim leaders say prevention programs often lead to discriminatory surveillance

Simon Cole, who is Chief Constable of Leicestershire Police, also confirmed Britain's domestic intelligence agency, MI5, had recently taken charge of right-wing terrorism investigations.

"The far right had [previously] been placed as domestic extremism," he told ABC News.

"MI5, the security services here, have moved now and they will take the lead with top-end far right as they would with any other terrorist group."

In the days which followed the New Zealand mosque attack, four people were arrested in the UK for promoting the Christchurch massacre either online or, in one case, while verbally abusing a taxi driver in Manchester.

A man was also arrested for stabbing a 19-year-old near Heathrow in what UK officials declared a terrorism event "inspired by the far right".

There have been four reported right-wing-inspired terrorism plots that have been thwarted by UK authorities since March 2017, compared with 13 planned Islamist attacks.

Far-right threat on the rise

Far-right party Britain First gained attention in 2018 after they were retweeted by US President Donald Trump. ( ABC News: James Glenday )

Chief Constable Cole said "security services have moved" to better deal with the threat from the far right, which appeared to be growing.

In the past year, right-wing extremist referrals to the UK's deradicalisation program climbed by 36 per cent and now accounted for one in five notifications to the scheme.

"Obviously it's a concern and we've seen in this country as you've seen on your side of the world now the consequences of some of that," Chief Constable Cole said.

He warned that Australia and all liberal democracies needed to do all they could to invest in prevention and deradicalisation.

"If you think you have a problem, you need to invest in it to get upstream of it," he said.

"In the long run, in plain economic terms, that will be better than dealing with the fallout of atrocities which have a financial and emotional toll which will last for years."

Australia's missing prevention budget

Sorry, this video has expired Melbourne has witnessed greater far-right demonstrations in recent years.

While Australia has a national CVE (countering violent extremism) strategy, called Living Safe Together, its budget has been inconsistent and relies in part on a patchwork of state and territory ancillary community programs.

In October last year, Griffith University's Kieran Hardy said the CVE line item in the 2018/19 federal budget had been removed, and community grants under the program appeared to have ceased.

A Department of Home Affairs spokesman said in a statement that the CVE line item is now reported under the budget statement for the National Security and Criminal Justice Program run by that department.

The Government has allocated more than $8 million to support CVE programs in 2018/19 and has spent more than $53 million on initiatives since 2013, the spokesman said.

Up to $10 million per year has been set aside to fund future CVE measures under the Home Affairs portfolio, he added.

The Department of Home Affairs lists the Living Safe Together grants program under its CVE section, but also states application for grants to the program closed in March 2015 and have since been awarded.

The Living Safe Together website has no details of community programs currently being funded, and a link to the Living Safe Together blog takes users to a defunct page.

"The Living Safe Together grants program was a one-off program to help smaller, community-based providers of intervention services to build their capacity and skill to work with individuals at risk of radicalisation to violence," the spokesman said.

"All Living Safe Together grants projects were finalised in 2017."

The website states there is a single CVE coordinator in each state and territory that "help to make sure that people are properly assessed so that we understand how to best support that individual".

The UK program, called Prevent, attempts to rescue people who are vulnerable to extreme ideologies before thoughts and words turn into behaviour.

Chief Constable Cole said the tone of national debate was often a significant factor.

"There is a thing about the kind of mood music," he said.

"All across the world at the moment the dialogue you hear in the public space is a bit more extreme than maybe it once was ... and that's when I think we have a problem.

"If certain behaviours are normalised, then we all have a problem as a society."

UK's 'Prevent': Social work or discriminatory surveillance?

The Prevent program obliges social services to report into the scheme those people suspected to be at risk of becoming drawn to terrorism.

Eighty per cent of the more than 7,000 cases examined by the program are deemed to require what Chief Constable Cole described as "normal social working".

"The last 20 per cent we refer on into a panel ... and that's where partners sit around the table and we do kind of case management as we would do if you thought the child was at risk of sexual abuse," he said.

"So how can we support this person, and what can we do?

"Is it about what they're thinking, do they need to be exposed to other ways of thinking, do they need to spend some time with people of other backgrounds?"

The program has attracted controversy and the UK's Home Office has announced a major review of the scheme this year.

Human rights lawyers and Muslim community leaders have criticised Prevent for what they said was invasive and discriminatory surveillance.

Chief Constable Cole himself acknowledged "there's a feeling sometimes that it over focuses on the Islamist part of the challenge we face", but maintained the program did its best to deliver proportionate responses to the tip-offs it receives.

'It took an event like Christchurch for people to understand'

Muslim community leader Suleman Nagdi said the far-right threat had been underestimated. ( ABC News: Lincoln Rothall )

Suleman Nagdi, a Muslim community leader in Leicester, told ABC News some criticisms of the UK's wider counterterrorism strategy were valid.

"I feel too much concentration has been given over the past few years in relation to religious discrimination and religious extremism and not enough time was spent on the dangers of far right," he said.

"I'm sure the balance needs realigning because ... what we've done is keep the eye off the ball and it took an event like [Christchurch] for people to understand."

Chief Constable Cole said the police welcomed the Home Office review.

"I think a challenge for Prevent is it's not perfect ... but what do you do instead, because today, if today is a typical day, there will be 20 referrals going to police Prevent teams across England and Wales ... and we have to do something with them," he said.

"We're dealing with real problems in real time."

He said there was no easy way to unpick the origins of hate crime, but responsible governments were obliged to try.

"It's tricky, we've had attacks in this country and it's like any preventative work, it's never going to be 100 per cent successful," Chief Constable Cole said.

"But it's the right thing to do, it's the responsible thing to do in a liberal democracy I believe to get upstream and try to keep people safe."