Preventing Violent Extremism Pathfinder Fund

This article is part of the Counter-Terrorism Portal project of Spinwatch.

The Preventing Violent Extremism Pathfinder Fund was established by the British government's Department for Communities and Local Government as as "a key element of the PREVENT element of the Government’s counter-terrorism strategy." It distributes funds via local government to organisation it sees as fight extremism. By October 2007 200 projects had been agreed, nearly 80 of them in London. Under Hazel Blears the government is increasing funding, and is to provide £45 million over the next three years to local partnerships through Prevent (PVE): Funding. By 2010-11, funding will rise to £18 million a year.

Uncertain Objectives

According to a PVE Pathfinder Fund Report published by the DCLG, which mapped a total of 261 PVE projects activities in 2007/08 for nine English regions it stated that:

"Over two-fifths of all projects across England sought to challenge the violent extremist ideology and support mainstream voices (Objective 1) and develop understanding, analysis and evaluation (Objective 6, 48% and 44% respectively)"

Table 1: This graph shows the number of PVE Pathfinder Projects that were focused on either of the 7 objectives of Prevent

According to the wording of the official British counter-terrorism Strategy - CONTEST, the purpose of Objective 6 is

"...to: develop supporting intelligence, analysis and information...".

Therefore, out of the 261 projects under the Pathfinder Fund, 44 percent of projects (114 actual projects) were focused on the collation of information, intelligence and analysis, along with undermining the extremist voices within local Muslim communities.

South-West England-All the projects that were carried out under the PVE Pathfinder Fund in the South-West of England (a total of 3) were categorised by the DCLG Report as assissting in the the delivery of "Objective 6" - to develop supporting intelligence, analysis and information'.

Funding: Regional Breakdown

Table 2: Breakdown of funding given to 9 English region under the PVE Pathfinder Fund for year 2007-08

Funding under the PVE Pathfinder Fund for the year 2007-08 totaled £5,970,377.00 and was distributed to the following nine English regions. A breakdown of how much funding each region obtained is given in the table 2.

London | North West | South East | East Midlands | West Midlands | East of England | Yorkshire and Humber | North East | South West