The number of young people admitted to London hospitals after knife attacks has fallen by 55 per cent since Sadiq Khan set up his Violence Reduction Unit seven years ago, City Hall figures released on Friday show.
Hospital admissions for knife assaults among youngsters have more than halved since 2019, with the capital recording a faster fall than the rest of England. City Hall said there had been nearly 12,500 fewer victims of violence causing injury over the same period, and 2,500 fewer knife crime victims in the last three years alone.
The announcement marks a major milestone for the unit: it has now helped one million Londoners. City Hall said about 750,000 young people had benefited directly from its work, alongside 250,000 parents, carers, youth workers and other professionals who have received training and support.
The Mayor said he had set up the VRU “because of a clear and long-held view that we cannot arrest our way out of violence”, adding that “violent crime is preventable, not inevitable”. More than £140 million has been invested in the unit since 2019, funding early intervention, youth support and work to steer vulnerable youngsters towards alternatives to crime.
The figures will be seized on by City Hall as evidence that the public-health approach to violence is working, but they come with a stark caveat. The Metropolitan Police still logged almost 14,000 “blade-enabled” crimes in the 12 months to the end of March 2026, with about a quarter resulting in wounds. Knife offences also fell by a further 10 per cent in the latest 12-month period.
Professor Martin Griffiths, a consultant trauma surgeon at Barts Health NHS Trust and clinical director of the Violence Reduction Network for NHS England in London, said the 55 per cent fall in young people admitted to hospital for knife assault was welcome news, adding that behind the figures were “young Londoners who are safer and families spared the worst day of their lives”.
Lib Peck, the director of London’s Violence Reduction Unit, said reaching one million Londoners showed what could be achieved through partnership, and pointed to “fewer young people in hospital and declining violence and knife crime” as proof that prevention was paying off. She warned that the momentum had to be kept up so that every young person in the capital was “safe and supported to thrive”.
The unit, England’s first, was modelled on the approach pioneered in Glasgow, which treats violence as a public-health problem rather than purely a policing one. It funds youth workers in hospital emergency departments and police custody suites, programmes in schools, mentoring and support for families, and work aimed at keeping young people out of gangs.
The latest figures mark a step up from City Hall’s earlier estimates: a statement in September put hospital admissions for knife assault among young people at “more than 50 per cent” lower than when the unit was created. The figures are recorded against a wider drop in serious violence in the capital, with the Met recording fewer homicides in 2024 than at any point since 2012.
City Hall insists enforcement remains part of the picture. The Met has continued to run targeted operations against street crime and weapons possession, including recent crackdowns on retail theft and the jailing of a gang supplying blank-firing guns converted into lethal firearms. But the persistence of incidents such as the suspected shooting in Woolwich this week shows the scale of the violence the unit is still trying to prevent.
The unit’s own 2025 review sets out how that money has been spent: youth workers embedded in police custody suites and hospital emergency departments across the capital, a London-wide network of 20,000 parents and carers, mentoring programmes, work to keep children in school, and funding for after-school activities in deprived areas. City Hall says early support for vulnerable children has helped narrow gaps for those with additional needs and reduced playground incidents in primary schools.
The 55 per cent figure compares hospital admissions for knife assault among young people with 2019, the year the unit was created. An earlier City Hall assessment, published in April 2025, used a narrower measure — hospital admissions of under-25s for assault with a sharp object — and put the fall at 28 per cent. City Hall says the improvement has accelerated as the unit’s programmes have bedded in, with London’s fall in hospital admissions for knife assault now outpacing the rest of England.
The unit’s funding has been a political battleground from the start. When it was launched with £500,000 in 2019, City Hall Conservatives dismissed it as “too little, too late”. The Mayor’s office points to more than £140 million of cumulative investment since then, and to record falls in homicides — London recorded its lowest homicide rate in more than a decade last year — as evidence the long-term approach is paying off.
