Damian Dallimore

VRU Director

Greater Manchester Violence Reduction Unit Director and Greater Manchester Lead for tackling serious and organised crime.

Dan Diamond

Partnership Lead

After many years in the National Probation Service, Dan now oversees the day-to-day running of the VRU and the partnership activity related to it.

Dr Rachel Jenner

Clinical Lead

Rachel’s substantive role is as an Emergency Medicine consultant in Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital Paediatric Emergency Department Emergency Department Rachel spends part of her week as Clinical Lead within the VRU.

Roger Edwards

Detective Inspector, GMP

Working full time in the VRU, Roger has responsibility for the strategic implementation of the VRU's work within Greater Manchester Police. Roger specialises in Information Sharing Agreements, Data Protection Impact Assessments and Contracts.

Dr Antony Edkins

Education Lead

Antony provides part-time support for the VRU’s education strategy. He uses his current work as an adviser and inspector alongside the Advanced Maths Support Programme to inform how we can keep young people safe from crime and violence. Antony has specialist qualifications to support school’s work for pupils with Autism, and to help staff understand and spot extremism and radicalisation.

Sushma Parmar

Probation Lead

Sushma’s substantive role is as a Senior Probation Officer working for the Greater Manchester Probation Service and is the Greater Manchester Lead in the National Probation Service for violence reduction.

Clare Griffiths

Youth Justice Lead

Clare is seconded to the Violence Reduction Unit one day per week and her substantive role is Head of Oldham Youth Justice Service. She also leads on youth violence and resettlement of children in custody across Greater Manchester Youth Justice.

Mel Garry

Communications Lead

As communications Lead for the VRU, Mel is responsible for sharing publicly the resources and interventions the VRU are putting in place to help prevent and reduce the impact of serious violence in our city-region at a regional, local, and place-based level.

Michael Phipps

Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprise Sector Strategic Lead

Michael coordinates the community-led, violence reduction programmes across Greater Manchester. Michael has extensive experience as a youth and community worker, and co-designed the community-led programme area of work with the VRU Programme Director.

Dave Gilbride

Victims Lead

Dave’s role is to be the victim’s voice within the VRU, ensuring all our work is victim focused and commissioning projects and interventions aimed at improving services to victims.

Graham Helm

Community Sports Lead

On a full-time secondment into the VRU from StreetGames, Graham leads a team that is responsible for all community sports activity for the VRU, including within community-led programmes where community sports and youth work are key priorities identified by young people and the community.

Professor Helen Lowey

Public Health Lead

Helen's passion is to reduce inequalities, she has led the development of various multi-agency strategies including accident prevention, suicide prevention and mental wellbeing, violence prevention, and substance misuse, ensuring that a whole system approach is taken.

Caroline Hemingway

Police Lead

James Carrick

Project Officer

James supports partnership leads across all aspects of VRU business including procurement, finance and legal.