UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has launched five Safer Streets Challenges backed by £50 million of funding, as part of the government’s £500 million Research and Development Missions Accelerator Programme (R&D MAP).

This will bring together researchers, innovators, communities, policing and frontline practitioners to tackle the crimes that affect people’s daily lives, using research and innovation to create solutions.

The R&D challenges are part of the government’s Safer Streets Mission, which aims to halve knife crime and violence against women and girls (VAWG) within a decade, and to rebuild public confidence in policing and the criminal justice system.

The five challenges will focus on concentrations of crime – understanding where crime happens and the sort of crimes occurring.

The research will also focus on building trust and confidence in policing and the justice system so communities can trust that these entities work.

The funding will deliver research and innovation to tackle VAWG and knife crime, to help reduce these offences.

The programme will fund new research and innovation across universities, businesses, public services, the voluntary sector and communities.

Each challenge is designed to build real evidence in real communities, shaped by people who know them best, so that what works can be scaled across the UK.

The first challenge will focus on concentrations of crime, leveraging AI to build a national crime map, while the second will use technology to help prevent violence against women and girls.

The third and fourth challenges will focus on building trust in policing and the justice system respectively, while the final challenge will work specifically on tackling knife crime.

The projects will try to set themselves apart by ensuring they are community led, bringing together researchers, police forces, schools, and community groups as active partners in designing and testing interventions in the places that need them most.

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Behind every crime statistic, is a story of somebody who has had their life affected, sometimes irreversibly, by a serious and distressing experience.

“It’s so important that we do everything we can to help prevent harms from happening in the first place,” science minister Lord Vallance said.

“We have an extraordinary research community in the UK, and this programme is about harnessing their innovation and expertise, backing them with dedicated Government funding, to help tackle these crimes and the problems they create in people’s daily lives.

“By using world‑class research to find new solutions to reducing crime we can build safer streets and stronger communities right across the country.”