Record referrals to Prevent anti-terror programme

A record number of referrals have been made to the government’s counter-terrorism programme, Prevent, by March 2025, new data shows.

A total of 8,778 referrals were made; There was a 27% increase from 6,922 the previous year.

The majority of referrals, 56%, were made to people who “do not have a defined ideology”.

This was followed by far-right ideology with 21 percent and Islamist extremism with 10 percent.

Children between the ages of 11 and 15 represented the largest proportion of referrals where the person’s age was known, at 36%.

Prevent is the government’s plan to divert people from terrorism.

An inquest into the Southport attack in October, in which three children were killed, heard a sharp increase in referrals to Prevent since the July 2024 attack, where there were “concerns about an obsession with violence”.

The attacker, Axel Rudakubana, had been referred to Prevent three times but the investigation heard he did not meet the threshold for further intervention because there was no evidence he held a fixed ideology.

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