The United Kingdom (UK), like many other countries, faces a severe and continuing threat from international terrorism. Preventing violent extremism (Prevent) and the terrorist acts that may follow is a long term challenge to be addressed at international, national and local levels. The government aims to prevent people becoming terrorists or supporting violent extremism through the Prevent component of the UK counter terrorism strategy. Councils, police, youth offending teams, schools, further and higher education, local health services, probation, prison services and fire and rescue services are all key players in delivering Prevent locally. This is a new and evolving demand on local public service partners. In October 2006, 70 councils in England received a total of £6 million from the Preventing Violent Extremism Pathfinder Fund (PVEPF) for partnership work with the police and other local services. A further £45 million will be provided to councils by the government between 2008 and 2011. The Audit Commission and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) undertook a learning and development exercise (LDE) to draw out the learning from the first year of Prevent. We visited 15 sites to ascertain how local partnerships are responding to the challenge of preventing people becoming involved in or supporting violent extremism. We looked at what worked well and identified barriers to progress.