The Domestic Abuse Report 2021: The Annual Audit
Every year the Domestic Abuse Report also includes a separate thematic element. The 2021 thematic report will be published later in the year.
© Women’s Aid, January 2021
Please cite this report as:
Women’s Aid (2021) The Domestic Abuse Report 2021: The Annual Audit, Bristol: Women’s Aid.
Revision, June 2021: This report and the associated summary were amended on 24th June 2021 to
reflect incorrect numbers and percentages included on a previously published version of the report. Please see page 2 for details.
Key Findings
- Local service providers continue to support large numbers of women and children. In 2019-20 Women’s Aid estimates that refuge services in England supported 10,592 women and 12,710 children and community-based services supported 103,969 women and 124,762 children
- Only 73.5% (50 out of 68) of the respondents providing refuge and 67.8% (40 out of 59) of those providing community-based support services were commissioned by their local authority
- Demand is still higher than the provision available, with 57.2% of refuge referrals declined during the year – 18.1% of all referrals were turned down due to lack of capacity in the refuge
- The number of spaces in refuge services in England still falls short of the number of spaces recommended by the Council of Europe by 1,694 spaces, which represents a 30.1% shortfall. An additional increase of 361 to 4,251 spaces by 1 November 2020 is due to temporary emergency funding which will soon come to an end
- Less than half of all vacancies posted on Routes to Support for England in 2019-20 were in rooms suitable for a woman with two children; only 4.0% could consider women who had no recourse to public funds.
Revision: estimates on numbers of referrals received, accepted and declined have been revised since publication of this report to reflect a correction to the core sample used. Please see our live data dashboards for updated figures.