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Some people are being referred to the House Workplace’s Stop deradicalisation programme to hurry up entry to psychological well being and neurodiversity providers quite than due to real counterterrorism issues, an inside authorities assessment has warned.
Stop, which is run by the House Workplace in collaboration with UK police and native authorities, seeks to establish individuals vulnerable to extremism and supply help to divert them away from violence earlier than any offence has been dedicated. Nonetheless, the division has expressed issues that the programme is underneath stress resulting from wider gaps in public providers.
This comes towards a pointy rise within the Stop caseload, because the variety of referrals to the scheme reached a report excessive of 8,778 within the yr to March 2025, a rise of greater than 1 / 4 on the earlier 12 months. The most important proportion of those referrals are kids aged 11 to fifteen.
On the similar time, over half 1,000,000 kids and younger individuals in England are on ready lists for psychological well being providers. Of those, practically a 3rd have been ready over two years for therapy and greater than half have been ready for over a yr, in response to knowledge analysed by the Royal School of Psychiatrists. In the meantime, the median ready time for an autism analysis is sort of 19 months for youngsters, NHS knowledge exhibits. Well being service steerage requires that people referred to Stop’s “Channel” interventions programme who’ve a psychological well being want should be seen inside every week.
The House Workplace’s warning — made in an inside assessment on Stop referrals seen by the FT — was not meant for public launch however has been submitted in proof to the inquiry into the 2024 Southport assault through which three younger women have been killed and eight different individuals injured by an area teenager, Axel Rudakubana. The doc, dated Could 2025, relies on submissions from a spread of public sector professionals who interact with Stop.
“Proof urged that the restricted capability of psychological well being assets has a notable impression on Stop thresholds,” the assessment reads. “Individually, ready lists for neurodivergence assessments reportedly impression the help obtainable to them.”
The assessment cites its findings that “typically practitioners made referrals to Stop to attempt to expedite psychological well being and neurodiversity help and analysis,” and provides that whereas such referrals could be “well-intentioned”, they don’t seem to be a very good use of counterterrorism assets.
The vast majority of Stop referrals are made by faculties and different training establishments, adopted by police, well being staff and native authorities.
David Anderson, a barrister and counterterrorism professional who led a separate House Workplace assessment into classes for Stop from the Southport assault, informed the FT that after a Stop referral, counterterrorism police must carry out intensive checks towards their information to weed out circumstances that aren’t terrorism-related. “This can be a resource-intensive train which factors up the necessity for referrers to have due regard to the aim of Stop, which is to cease individuals from being drawn into terrorism,” he mentioned.
Whereas the FT had beforehand reported comparable issues from charities together with the Nationwide Autistic Society about Stop getting used to fast-track help, that is the primary time that the federal government has admitted it’s taking place. In separate proof to the Southport inquiry which has not but been printed, the House Workplace cites coaching from the NAS on “autism, extremism and radicalisation” which makes clear that there is no such thing as a proof that helps a hyperlink between autism and terrorism within the basic inhabitants.
Jonathan Corridor, the UK’s chief inspector of terrorism laws, mentioned the House Workplace’s assessment revealed the existence of “a social downside being unearthed and falling into the lap of counterterrorism professionals”.
“Within the absence of higher help, I’m not in any respect stunned that Stop officers are pulling any obtainable lever to get assist for [vulnerable young people] however at root this isn’t a counterterrorism downside — it’s a deep social downside of which the Stop referral is merely a symptom,” he mentioned.
Sarah St Vincent, govt director of the marketing campaign group Rights and Safety Worldwide, criticised the truth that professionals have been “so determined to get assist for his or her sufferers that they’re referring them to a secretive policing programme that would impression them for the remainder of their lives”.
“If that’s not an indication of a badly twisted strategy in Westminster to individuals’s welfare, I don’t know what’s,” she added.
A House Workplace spokesperson emphasised that there was no causal hyperlink between neurodiversity or psychological well being and radicalisation, and that psychological well being and neurodiversity are distinct.
“We perceive that individuals referred to Stop could have a spread of vulnerabilities, and we take our safeguarding obligations extraordinarily severely,” the spokesman mentioned. “That’s the reason we proceed to strengthen Stop’s strategy to psychological well being and neurodiversity.”
