Nearly 10,000 people have been reported to the government’s anti-terrorism programme with referrals reaching their highest level in a decade.
A record 10,293 referrals were made to Prevent for 9,957 people in the year to September 2025, official figures show.
The scheme, which aims to stop people from being drawn into terrorism, saw referrals rise by 39% from 7,408 in the previous 12 months.
According to Home Office data, it is the highest annual number of referrals since records began in 2015.
Officials recorded a sustained increase in referrals following the Southport attack in July 2024.
Axel Rudakubana, who murdered three girls at a dance class and attempted to kill eight other children and two adults, had been referred to Prevent three times.
However, his case was closed on each occasion because officials concluded there was no clear evidence of an extremist ideology.
Where age was known, children aged 11 to 15 made up the largest share of Prevent referrals, amounting to 3,655 cases (36%), followed by 16-and 17-year-olds with 1,379 referrals (13%), the Home Office said.
A further 393 referrals (4%) involved children aged ten or under.
The figures, published on Thursday, also show that 2,103 referrals (20%) were linked to concerns about extreme right-wing ideology, up from 1,480 in the past 12 months.
Meanwhile, referrals relating to Islamist extremism fell slightly to 860 (8%), down from 945.
There were also 818 referrals (8%) involving a fascination with extreme violence or mass casualty attacks, 95 (1%) related to incel (involuntarily celibate) extremism, and 32 (0.3%) related to left-wing extremism.
A further 353 referrals (3%) involved multiple ideologies, with no single dominant ideology identified.
More than half of all referrals (56%) involved individuals with no identified ideological motivation.
The Home Office has also published ethnicity data for people referred to the Prevent programme.
Providing ethnicity information on the Prevent referral form is not mandatory, meaning the figures cover 5,315 referrals in the year to September 2025 – around 52% of the total.
Of those referrals, 3,600 (68%) involved people identified as white, 949 (18%) as Asian, 401 (8%) as black, and 365 (7%) as “other”.
Following an initial assessment, referrals considered to be at risk of radicalisation can be passed to a multi-agency “channel panel”.
Chaired by local authorities, the panels assess a person’s vulnerability to radicalisation and decide whether they require a tailored package of support to address the risks.
Of the 1,100 referrals accepted as Channel cases where ethnicity was known, 835 (76%) involved white people, 159 (14%) Asian, 59 (5%) black, and 47 (4%) “other”.
Overall, 1,810 Prevent referrals were adopted as channel cases in the year to September, representing 18% of all referrals.
That is up from 11% in the previous 12-month period.
“The increases in referrals and counts of adoptions observed this year may, in part, reflect heightened public awareness of Prevent following the Southport incident in July 2024,” the Home Office said.
The figures also show that more than a third (36%) of people referred to Prevent in the year to September had at least one recorded neurodiversity or mental health condition.
Autism was the most commonly recorded neurodiversity condition, affecting 1,833 people (18%), followed by a learning disorder, recorded in 279 cases (3%).
Depression was the most frequently recorded mental health condition, affecting 362 people (4%), followed by anxiety disorders (313, or 3%) and psychotic disorders (256, or 3%).
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