On August 26, 2025, the United Kingdom’s safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, made a striking admission: the main screening tool used to determine whether domestic abuse victims receive urgent support "doesn't work." Speaking candidly to the BBC’s File on 4, Phillips acknowledged the mounting evidence and growing chorus of concern from academics, charities, and bereaved families that the Dash assessment—a checklist of 27 questions—has failed to accurately identify those most at risk of serious harm or death.
The Dash (Domestic, Abuse, Stalking, Harassment and Honour-Based Violence) assessment has been a cornerstone of the UK’s approach to domestic abuse since 2009. Developed in partnership with the charity SafeLives, the tool is used by police, social services, and healthcare workers across England and Wales. Victims are asked a series of yes-or-no questions, such as “Is the abuse getting worse?” and “Has the current incident resulted in injury?” The answers generate a score: those who answer “yes” to 14 or more questions are classified as “high risk,” triggering intensive support and urgent protection. If the score falls below that threshold, the victim is rated as “medium” or “standard” risk, with no guarantee of specialist help.
But the stakes are tragically high. According to the National Police Chiefs’ Council, violence against women and girls now accounts for 20% of all recorded crime in England and Wales—over 400,000 incidents each year. The Office for National Statistics reported 108 domestic homicides in England and Wales in the year to March 2024. Starkly, a woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK.
Despite its widespread use, Dash’s effectiveness has come under fire. As far back as 2016, a College of Policing review flagged "inconsistencies" in the tool, recommending that frontline police responders adopt a different approach. In 2020, a London School of Economics study analyzing Greater Manchester Police data revealed that in nearly nine out of ten repeat cases of violence, the victim had previously been classified as "standard" or "medium" risk by Dash. A 2022 analysis by researchers from the Universities of Manchester and Seville found that the Dash questions "contributed almost nothing" to the tool’s predictive performance. Most recently, an investigation by The Telegraph identified at least 55 women killed by their partners after being graded only standard or medium risk by Dash.
These findings have fueled frustration and heartbreak for families who lost loved ones. Pauline Jones, whose daughter Bethany Fields was killed by her partner in 2010 just a month after being graded as medium risk, shared her anguish: “When you hear about the Dash, and you know your daughter's death was so easily preventable, it destroys not just your heart, but your very soul.”
Campaigners echo these concerns. Nour Norris, whose niece Raneem Oudeh and sister Khaola Saleem were murdered by Raneem’s ex-partner in 2018, told the BBC, “Raneem was failed because her risk was downgraded to a tick-box exercise. That’s how simple it is, and we can’t allow victim safety to be dependent on which police force is going to answer their call.” Norris argued that the system’s simplicity and inconsistency put lives at risk, especially when the onus falls on vulnerable victims who may not even recognize the abuse they’re experiencing.
Jess Phillips herself was blunt about the limitations of Dash. She described the tool as having “obvious problems,” and admitted, “Until I can replace it with something that does [work], we have to make the very best of the system that we have.” She added, “Any risk assessment tool is only as good as the person who is using it.” Phillips also pointed out a sobering reality: “People were killed even when deemed to be at high risk… The grading system won’t immediately protect you. It is the systems that flow from those risk assessments that matter much, much, much more than the score.”
Legal action may be on the horizon. Families of women who were murdered after not being graded as high risk are exploring lawsuits against the institutions they believe failed their loved ones. Lawyer Matthew Jury, whose firm has been approached by relatives, told the BBC, “These aren’t just statistics, they’re preventable tragedies and it leaves families devastated when risks are inadequately assessed and victims are left exposed.”
The debate over Dash’s shortcomings is not confined to the bereaved. Dr. Heather Strang, director of the Jerry Lee Centre for Experimental Criminology at the University of Cambridge, told the BBC, “When it comes to the question of the reliability of Dash as a predictive tool, there is a growing consensus that Dash does not do that job at all well. It wasn’t designed to do that, but it has become the primary tool over the past several years used by police to risk assess and predict future behaviour.”
Some police forces have started to move away from Dash. In 2022, the National Police Chiefs’ Council decided that forces should use a new risk questionnaire called Dara, developed by the College of Policing. Dara is designed to address the inconsistencies and poor predictive accuracy that have plagued Dash. However, as of August 2025, 20 out of 39 UK police forces responding to BBC freedom of information requests said they were still using Dash. The NPCC emphasized that risk assessment tools should not be used in isolation and that officers are expected to use their own experience and training in safeguarding victims.
Charities working in the sector have also voiced concerns about Dash—concerns that are often compounded by contractual requirements to use the tool. Djanomi Robinson, operations manager at Sistah Space, a charity supporting Black African and Caribbean heritage women affected by domestic and sexual abuse, told the BBC, “We have always believed that it falls short of being competent, specifically with the demographic that we represent. There’s a lot of nuances that are missed, cultural specifications that are missed. We’ve had many instances where service users of ours fall short, they don’t rank very high in their risk assessment, but we as specialists can tell actually their situation is quite serious.”
Ellen Miller, chief executive of SafeLives—the charity that originally developed Dash—defended the tool’s simplicity and accessibility, but conceded that its failings stem from both the tool not being updated and the way it is used. The government has now commissioned SafeLives to lead an initial review into the entire domestic abuse risk assessment process across agencies.
The Home Office is conducting a broader review of how all agencies handle domestic abuse cases, with a new strategy expected to be published in autumn 2025. Meanwhile, new measures are being rolled out to crack down on so-called “honour-based” abuse, including female genital mutilation, forced marriage, and murder. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper underscored the government’s commitment, saying, “All forms of honour-based abuse are devastating crimes that can shatter lives. There is no ‘honour’ in them. For too long, these offences have often been misunderstood by professionals, resulting in victims not getting the support they deserve. Make no mistake – we will use everything at our disposal to make sure perpetrators face justice and victims are protected.”
As the UK grapples with the reality that its primary domestic abuse risk assessment tool is not fit for purpose, the call for reform grows louder. The challenge now lies in developing a system that is not only accurate and responsive, but also sensitive to the diverse experiences of victims—before more lives are lost to preventable tragedy.
