Each year I look back and often talk about the successes we have had at ICVA, the workstreams achieved and the incredible work of schemes and ICVs. This year….. will be absolutely no different!!!!

We have so much to be proud of again this year and I am going to unashamedly share it with you all! So, settle in, get a cuppa and a mince pie and join me whilst I look back over the incredible year that was 2025 for independent custody visiting!!

We launched our Digital Transformation Strategy in 2024 for delivery in 2025. Now, I appreciate that strategies aren’t always edge of the seat stuff, but this one was a bit of a good ‘un even if I do say so myself! You can check out the full document here, but in brief, we have had two major steps towards the achieving all of the aims this year, those being:

• A new members website for independent custody visiting scheme managers! Being a scheme manager is often a bit of a lonely role, with those undertaking it often being the only on in the office undertaking the work, pesky ICVA suggesting improvements and changes and the integral work of support the brilliant volunteers. Our new improved site gives a place for scheme managers to share good practice, ask questions of national peers and have access to a whole host of resources to help save them time and network.
• The second and probably biggest project to date for ICVA and our membership was the design of the new e-learning platform for ICVs! I need to say thank you to our brilliant members for supporting and uplift in subscriptions so that we could deliver this ambitious project, we could not have done it without your faith in us to produce and excellent product for you all. The e-learning platform was launched in November, and already has some fantastic resources on it, including the most comprehensive induction package for new ICVs that we have ever produced. ICVA’s membership, engagement and training manager has worked tirelessly to get this ready for launch, ensuring it is engaging, professional and super accessible for members and had done an outstanding job. We are so proud of this platform and will continue to populate it in the coming weeks and months. This platform will allow scheme managers to assign and track volunteer training, and be an excellent learning experience for the ICVs. I am so very, very proud of this.

Another outcome from the strategy has been to increase our reach and awareness on social media and we have seen a real uptick in engagement on LinkedIn and Insta (the two platforms we use), please do give us a follow and engage with our posts, we would love to see you there!

Of course, with all of the successes come some challenges, and we have not yet managed to source any funding to help us get to our end goal of developing a digital national reporting tool for ICVs. We have received some pro bono support in terms of development which has been fantastic and we are hopeful of changing ICVA from a non-profit to a charity in the coming months to allow us to apply for more pots of funding, we will keep trying and are hopeful that we will have good news for you all next year.

In terms of policy work, we have been very grateful to our stakeholder network this year including the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) National Appropriate Adult Network (NAAN) and others for some great work undertaken to reduce the number of children being held in handcuffs in custody awaiting strip searching. You can read the letter to all forces on that here. We are also super grateful to the NPCC for their speedy action when we reported a disturbingly high number of abandoned visits, the letter to all forces on this can be seen here.

This year our schemes have also been working super hard on the third round of ICVA’s Quality Assurance Framework (QAF), this assessment process allows schemes to benchmark, to see whether they are compliant with the Code of Practice and to celebrate their successes and where they are delivering outstanding independent custody visiting! We know that our members have a lot of demands on their time, so we are so pleased to work with them on this project, and we really look forward to celebrating with them next year! Keep on trucking QAF-fers!

Looking forward to next year, we will continue working with the Home Office on attaining really important changes to the independent custody visiting Code of Practice, we have called for revisions (in consultation with schemes and stakeholders alike) to guarantee ICVs’ immediate access to custody suites, ensure that they can speak to detainees in private out of the sight and hearing of police officers, and allow them to have access to custody records.

We will also be taking on board your feedback to inform our business plan for 25/26, thinking about how we can best deliver services to meet their needs and ensure that the monitoring of police custody keeps ensuring that all detainees in police custody are treated equitably, fairly and with dignity, onwards team!

Wishing you all the very best over the festive period, and we are excited to continue working with you all in 2026.