The third progress report of the cross-government suicide prevention strategy details the activity that has taken place across England to reduce deaths by suicide in the year ending March 2016.

This report is being used to update the 2012 strategy in 5 main areas:

• expanding the strategy to include self-harm prevention in its own right
• every local area to produce a multi-agency suicide prevention plan
• improving suicide bereavement support in order to develop support services
• better targeting of suicide prevention and help seeking in high risk groups
• improve data at both the national and local levels

These updates will help to meet the recommendations of the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health relevant to suicide prevention: to reduce the number of suicides by 10% by the year ending March 2021 and for every local area to have a multi-agency suicide prevention plan in place by the end of 2017.