Women will be passed information about the past of a violent partner in an initiative being considered by a police force where nine people have died in domestic violence homicides in four years.

The incoming chief constable of Essex police, Steven Kavanagh, told the Guardian he is taking personal control of the way domestic violence is dealt with in the force, which is criticised for its handling of victims and response to incidents in a police inspection report published on Thursday.

He wants to bring in a "dare to share" information policy in which women can ask for details of a new or existing partner's violent past.

Essex, which receives 80 domestic violence calls a day, has already been subject to highly critical reports from the independent police watchdog over its failure to protect women who died at the hands of abusers despite contact with the force.

Between 2008 and 2011 three women and a child were killed in domestic violence homicides in Essex, leading the Independent Police Complaints Commission to identify a pattern of shortcomings. These included a failure to link incidents, lack of effective background checks and the inappropriate downgrading of calls for help. A further five women also died in domestic violence murders in Essex up to September last year.

In response, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary began an inquiry this year into how Essex handles domestic abuse.

The HMIC report, published on Thursday, warns that victims are still being put at unnecessary risk in the county, despite major improvements in the way the force deals with violent and threatening domestic incidents.

Its findings were released as the family of Maria Stubbings – one of the women killed by a violent partner after repeated contact with Essex police – renewed their call for a public inquiry into domestic violence.

The HMIC advised the Essex force to:

• Ensure all staff understand how dealing effectively with domestic abuse can prevent homicides.

• Target repeat perpetrators with the help of the Crown Prosecution Service by pursuing "victimless prosecutions – evidence-based cases where the alleged victim is unwilling to co-operate.

• Intensify its work with domestic violence agencies.

• Improve the way it prioritises domestic violence cases.

The report highlighted cases that were treated as a priority where a victim had rung police about threats made by text or on social media when the perpetrator was abroad. Staff were allowed to downgrade incidents for a less urgent response but they were fearful of doing so in case they were criticised at a later date.

HMIC warned: "By treating every case of domestic abuse as a priority there is a risk of the more urgent cases not being properly prioritised. As a result victims could be put at unnecessary risk."

Accepting the report, Kavanagh, said much had improved in how victims were protected, but there was more work to be done.

He said the way all of each day's 80 domestic violence call outs were treated as a priority was in danger of swamping the whole process of assessing which victims were at risk of immediate harm and therefore how to protect them.

Kavanagh said: "We need to use the information we have in a more effective way. He said he wanted to introduce a bold information sharing policy known as "dare to share" in an attempt to improve the protection the police could give victims of domestic violence. The scheme is currently being piloted in four forces.

"I am pushing very firmly to say we can do this more effectively if we share information with partners," said Kavanagh. "I want to dare to share in Essex with other agencies and with women themselves.

"It means women who are entering into relationships with an individual they have concerns about will be able to ring the police to find out about them – that is something we want to be able to provide. I want to see how we can bring this in countywide as part of our repeat victim strategy."

He is also pursuing an "Achilles heel" policy in which repeat perpetrators of domestic violence – which in many cases involve victims who are too frightened to give evidence – are targeted for other offences.

The force has drawn up a hit list of the top 10 perpetrators of domestic violence and plans to pursue them either through targeting them for other crimes or working with the CPS to take victimless prosecutions against them.

Sandra Horley is chief executive of the Refuge, the domestic violence charity said: "Essex Police have come under scrutiny in this new report ... but the truth is that police failure is not confined to one force.

"It is widespread across the country. We have exhausted all options – a public inquiry is the only place left to go."

Forces failings: incidents treated in isolation



The murder of Jeanette Goodwin was one of up to nine domestic violence killings in the last four years in Essex. Many of them revealed repeated failure patterns in the Essex police force.

Goodwin, 47, a mother of three, made seven reports to the police concerning harassment and domestic violence by her former partner; these ran from January 2011 up to her death on 24 July that year when she was stabbed 30 times by 44-year-old Martin Bunch, at her home in Southend.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission said she had an "inadequate response" from Essex police the day she died, with "a breakdown of communication, a lack of resources and a failure to appropriately prioritise the case".

A few weeks before Goodwin's death, Christine Chambers and her daughter, Shania, two, were shot dead by her former partner, David Oakes, at their home in Braintree, Essex.

The IPCC found a series of incidents involving the couple that were reported to the force over a two-year period but treated in isolation by officers. The force did not take Chambers' fear of her partner into consideration as a reason why she did not pursue complaints against him.

Before these homicides, Maria Stubbings was strangled at her home in 2008 after repeated contact with the police and after her calls for help were downgraded from domestic violence involving a "very high risk victim" to a "burglary" by the Essex force.

In 2010 Mary Russell, 81, died of head injuries at home in Leigh-on-Sea after her husband hit her. She had made eight 999 calls over the preceding seven months.

A report by Southend Safeguarding Vulnerable Adults Board found police treated Russell's seven claims of domestic violence as standalone incidents rather being related.

Between June and September in 2012 three women were killed in Essex in domestic violence homicides and another is being investigated as a suspected domestic murder. The three were Eystna Blunnie, 20, who was nine months pregnant, Claire Parrish, 37, and Gillian Andrade, 39. The force confirmed that in at least three of the cases, the victims had had contact with police before they died.