The Kirklees Prevent Young Peoples’ Engagement Team: Insights and lessons from its first year

The 2015 Counter-Terrorism Act placed a legal duty on all ‘specified’ English public bodies, including local authorities, to take due regard to prevent terrorism and extremism. Kirklees local authority in West Yorkshire responded by creating, with their own resources, a ‘Prevent Engagement Team’ that aimed to engage young people, both in schools and in the wider Kirklees community, in preventative anti-extremism work. This report provides analysis of the first year of the team’s operation, based on qualitative research with the Prevent Engagement team and wider stakeholders carried out by the University of Huddersfield research team; the University team also devised and delivered a bespoke training course for the Prevent team and a wider group of colleagues engaged in Prevent work.