Dame Nicole Jacobs has been reappointed as Domestic Abuse Commissioner for a third term, running from September 2025 to September 2028, the Home Office confirmed on 5 December 2025. For services from Cumbria to West Yorkshire, stability at the top matters as councils and police work through another difficult winter.

First appointed in 2019 and formerly chief executive at Standing Together Against Domestic Abuse, Jacobs leads an office created by the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. The role is independent, with statutory powers to champion victims and survivors, raise public awareness and hold agencies and ministers to account.

Under the 2021 Act, Tier One councils must establish a Local Partnership Board, assess local need, publish a strategy and commission specialist support in safe accommodation; they must monitor delivery and report annually to government. That duty is not optional, and it shapes day-to-day decisions from Northumberland to Greater Manchester. Funding remains live. Ministers lifted the Domestic Abuse Safe Accommodation Grant by £30 million to £160 million for 2025/26; the department says £507 million has gone to councils since 2021. A Commons committee now puts the running total at £667 million with this year’s uplift included.

The scale is stark. The Office for National Statistics estimates 7.8% of adults - around 3.8 million people - experienced domestic abuse in the year ending March 2025. Police recorded about 816,493 domestic abuse-related crimes over the same period; recent changes to recording rules help explain a fall on the previous year, and fewer than one in five victims of partner abuse report to the police.

Closer to home, Greater Manchester Police say they arrested almost 20,000 people for domestic abuse offences last year and issued nearly 2,000 protection notices. Since the Home Office’s pilot of Domestic Abuse Protection Orders began in November 2024, GMP has secured more than 400 orders across six districts - a tool officers say is keeping survivors safer without long court battles.

In West Yorkshire, force data show 61,981 domestic abuse occurrences in 2024/25, with 26,990 involving a repeat victim. That level of repeat demand is exactly why multi-year funding and joint commissioning matter for smaller, specialist Northern providers as much as for the larger names.

Change is also happening at the front door. Under Raneem’s Law, domestic abuse specialists are now embedded in 999 control rooms in Northumbria and Humberside, giving real-time advice to call handlers and officers, with a national rollout planned by year end. The Commissioner will be expected to scrutinise whether that translates into quicker, safer decisions on the ground.

For councils, the commissioning rules are tightening. The Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 will require local commissioners in England to collaborate on domestic abuse support, with needs assessments informing joint strategies - so the Commissioner’s scrutiny will land directly in town halls from Teesside to Trafford.

Jacobs has been willing to challenge ministers. In November she warned that re-releasing recalled offenders after 56 days would put victims and survivors “in harm’s way”, with “devastating consequences” - a signal that her third term will be firm where safety is at stake.

The reappointment runs until September 2028. Readers across the North will judge it on outcomes they can feel: stable refuge places, quicker protection orders and reliable funding that reaches smaller specialists as well as larger providers. The Commissioner’s legal powers to demand data and push agencies and ministers to act are there; our region will expect to see them used.