The rollcall of cuts to domestic abuse services makes grim reading, as do the statistics on domestic abuse.

In the year to March 2017, 1.9 million people in England and Wales – 1.2 women and 713,000 men – experienced domestic abuse, according to the Office for National Statistics. Two women are killed every week in England by a partner or ex-partner

In 2015 the Femicide Census was launched by Women’s Aid, based on information collected by Karen Ingala Smith and recorded in her blog Counting Dead Women. Between January and September this year, at least 106 UK women have been killed by men, or where a man is the principal suspect, according to the blog. That equates to one women dead every 2.6 days.

Nine in 10 women killed in 2016 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland died at the hands of someone they knew, according to the annual Femicide report by Women’s Aid. Of these, 78 women were killed by their current or former intimate partner, three by their sons and five by another male family member. Nine were killed by a stranger.

Services to support people experiencing domestic abuse have faced severe cuts since 2010, when the coalition government was elected. According to research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the number of domestic violence cases registered by councils and by the police has risen dramatically in the past seven years, but local authorities across England have cut spending on domestic violence refuges by nearly a quarter (24%) since 2010, from £31.2m in 2010-11 to £23.9m in 2016-17.



On one day this year, 94 women and 90 children were turned away

from refuges in England, according to Women’s Aid.

But there is worse to come. Housing benefit makes up 53% of total refuge funding, but the Departments for Communities and Local Government and for Work and Pensions plan to remove refuges and other short-term supported housing from the welfare system. This means vulnerable women will not be able to pay for placements with housing benefit.

A Women’s Aid emergency survey of refuges revealed that more than one-third could be forced to close as a result of government changes to funding. A further 13% said they would have to reduce bed spaces, and Women’s Aid has estimated that this would lead to over 4,000 more women and children being turned away.

Charlotte Kneer, a survivor of domestic abuse and chief executive of the Reigate and Banstead Women’s Aid refuge in Surrey, goes further: she believes the changes could mean the closure of every refuge in England.

The impact of cuts has hit hard in some places. This year, Sunderland became the only major UK city with no domestic violence refuge after it was forced to find savings of £74m, which included ending its funding for Wearside Women in Need, a non-profit organisation that runs four safe houses and multiple support programmes across Sunderland.

There is also a clear link between domestic abuse and a woman’s likelihood of becoming an offender. According to the Prison Reform Trust, 57% of women in prison in the UK report having been the victim of domestic violence. More than half (53%) report having experienced emotional, physical or sexual abuse as a child, compared to 27% of men.

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