The Home Office has launched a consultation on the Protect Duty. The consultation explores how we might use legislation to enhance the protection of UK-wide publicly accessible locations- and anyone who uses them- from potential terrorist attacks.
A Home Office e-circular dated 30th April 2021 titled “Protect Duty within Faith Communities” said, “We are keen to hear views from the full range of UK faith communities, not only because the Protect Duty is likely to affect many faith centres, but also because we recognise that the needs, priorities and operation of places of worship are often very different to those of other, commercial or public sector publicly accessible locations. We want to ensure the Duty will improve protection for people using faith centres and other publicly accessible locations without being overly burdensome. It’s important that we capture your views, so that we can make sure the Protect Duty works for everyone.”
The Protect Duty consultation is separate to the Places of Worship security consultation and the Faith Security training survey you may have responded to. Rather than consulting on Government’s physical security measures and training offerings, the Protect Duty focuses on how public security could be improved through legislation which would provide a certainty of responsibility, and a greater consistency of measures and effect across the whole country.
The consultation can be found at this link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/protect-duty.
The consultation closes on 2 July. Currently response levels from the faith communities are low, so Home Office would appreciate your help in encouraging more responses from faith communities.
If you require more information, please do not hesitate to contact the team at ProtectDuty@homeoffice.gov.uk.
