Stronger financial management, performance oversight and risk management needed as Prevent referrals hit “record high”, says spending watchdog

The report also revealed that funding for Prevent to priority local authorities more than halved between 2020-21 and 2026-27.

Prevent plays a role in the UK’s counter-terrorism system by seeking to identify and support individuals susceptible to radicalisation before they become involved in terrorism.

The NAO found evidence that the programme has a “positive impact” on those who receive support.

However, it warned that rising referral volumes and an increasing proportion of referrals without a “clear, dominant extremist ideology”, are placing growing pressure on the system.

The report found that the nature of referrals has changed “considerably” - with just 30% of referrals in the year ending September 2025 linked to a “clear, dominant extremist ideology”, down from 73% in 2017.

The NAO observed that the change is reflected in new referral categories introduced in April 2024.

The report said: “One of the new categories identifies individuals who lack a clear ideology but have a fascination with extreme violence or mass casualty attacks. These individuals are sometimes referred to as violence-fixated, or violence-fascinated, individuals, or VFIs. In the year ending September 2025, 8% of referrals were in this category.

“Currently, the Home Office and Counter Terrorism Policing do not have a unified view of when such individuals should meet the threshold for Channel support.”

Despite the change in the type of cases encountered, the NAO found that Channel panels take a “strong multi-agency approach” to their work - considering referrals carefully and drawing on expertise from policing, health, education and social care.

However, the NAO also saw how panels are often forced to make decisions with “incomplete data”, due to delays in receiving information requests from delivery partners.

In 2025-26, the Home Office underspent its £23.4 million Prevent budget by 28%, continuing a six-year pattern in which it underspent by an average of £5.6 million (17%) a year in real terms.

The report found that at the same time, funding for Prevent to priority local authorities fell from £9.5 million to 45 authorities in 2020-21 to £4.4 million to 27 authorities in 2026-27.

To aid improvement in Prevent’s delivery, the NAO recommended that the Home Office should:

• Agree with Counter Terrorism Policing a unified view of the current thresholds for progressing cases with a fascination with extreme violence or mass-casualty attacks to Channel support.
• Strengthen financial management to avoid significant underspends in future and to improve its understanding of local delivery costs, including how much local authorities spend on running Channel panels.
• Improve oversight of Prevent, using stronger performance data and risk management to identify pressures and measure success.

Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: “Prevent is operating in an increasingly complex environment, with record referrals and changing patterns of risk.

"To build on the positive cross-agency work at the heart of the programme, the Home Office needs to strengthen its financial management, oversight and evaluation of the programme so it can build on what is working and ensure the programme is ready for the challenges ahead."

Lottie Winson