The latest Family Court Statistics Quarterly for October to December 2025 shows a “concerning” rise in the number of domestic violence remedy orders applied for, up 5% in the final quarter of 2025 compared with Q4 2024. The number of orders made increased by 2% to 9,260 over the same period. There were 36,376 applications and 37,410 orders made throughout 2025, up 5% and similar to 2024 respectively.
The statistics chime with a newly published report from Women’s Aid which is critical of the government’s stated aims to halve violence against women and girls in the next decade. The Annual Audit 2026 from Women’s Aid identified a severe shortage in specialist domestic abuse services as demand continues to outstrip supply.
Despite a year-on-year increase in bed spaces, of the 10,665 women and 11,732 children who were supported by refuge services last year, almost two thirds (65.2%) of refuge referrals were rejected marking the highest proportion of referrals rejected in five years. According to the report, the most common reason for rejected refuge referrals was lack of capacity or space (42.7% of all rejected referrals). The report suggests this may be linked to increased lengths of stay in refuges due to delays in accessing appropriate move-on accommodation.
Space at refuges is well below the Council of Europe’s recommendations. The 4,619 bed spaces across 286 refuges represented an increase of 68 bed spaces since 1st May 2024, however this represents just 19.9% of the Council of Europe’s recommendation of one refuge bed space per 10,000 head of population.
The report also highlights the increase in technology facilitated abuse. Online stalking (78.1%), compromising social media profiles (68.0%), misuse of GPS trackers (68.0%), and non-consensual intimate image sharing (or threats of sharing) (66.4%) were all identified as the most common forms of technology-facilitated abuse disclosed.
The government promised the “full power of the state” in its launch of the violence against women and girls strategy. All police forces in England and Wales will introduce specialist rape and sexual offence investigation teams to hunt down perpetrators, with specialist investigators to apprehend, investigate and lock up rapists and sex offenders across the country. The specialist teams will replace an “outdated” system, in which officers often don’t have the specialist knowledge to investigate rapists and sex offenders, resulting in perpetrators remaining at large.
Women’s Aid has urged the government to recognise the value of specialist services and put in place long-term, sustainable investment. The government must expedite the welcome plans to review current commissioning standards and set out a new National Commissioning Statement, it said, overseeing supported housing and ensuring there is oversight of poor commissioning decisions, prioritising survivor needs over cost-cutting measures, especially when it is clear that investing in non-specialist services leads to survivors flocking to other public services and creating more pressure on those systems.
Without investing in specialist services and breaking down the wider systemic issues, the government will not deliver on its promise of halving VAWG in the next decade and survivors will be left with no safe exit route, the organisation added.
Farah Nazeer, chief executive of Women’s Aid, said:
“As a direct result of consistently poor commissioning decisions, the domestic abuse sector has faced a decades long funding crisis, yet despite this, it continued to deliver lifesaving care to women and children escaping abuse. It is clear that if we are to tackle the epidemic of violence faced by women and girls, we need the government to urgently address all parts of the system. It is unacceptable that, due to poor decision-making at local level, and the resulting lack of housing and move-on accommodation, women and children are forced to remain in refuges for far longer, leaving countless others unable to receive the support they so desperately need.
“We also need to see dedicated, ringfenced funding for victims, survivors and those who support them. An unacceptable number of services are operating on partial or unstable funding, with many relying on reserves and volunteers to sustain essential support — with direct consequences for survivors, particularly those with more complex needs and those in by and for Black and minoritised services.
“The reality is that domestic abuse cannot be eradicated without the support and knowledge that specialist domestic abuse services bring. These services understand survivors and the help they need to rebuild their lives. Their value must be recognised for the lifesaving work they do, and that they are fundamentally the backbone of our country’s response to ending violence against women and girls. The work of these services must be protected, if we are to finally live in a world where domestic abuse is no longer tolerated.”
