AN ISLE of Wight man has been awarded an MBE for his work in preventing extremism and hate crime in Portsmouth.

Charlie Pericleous, 39, who lives on the IW and went to Sandown High, Lake Middle and Gatten and Lake schools, has been honoured in the Queen's Birthday Honours List.

He works at Portsmouth City Council, where he has been the preventing violent extremism coordinator since 2015 and previously managed the hate crime service.

As part of his work he tackled the fallout from six men going from Portsmouth to fight for terror organisation Isis in Syria.

Out of the six men, five died and one who returned was jailed under counter-terrorism laws.

Charlie said: "It's an unexpected honour and privilege to receive this award, I've been hugely proud to work in Portsmouth for 15 years.

"It's a great city and this award is a recognition of all the fantastic work that our organisations and communities do every day to support and keep people in Portsmouth safe".

Before working at the council, Charlie spent five years at Hampshire Constabulary, coordinating police responses to missing people, hate crime and supporting vulnerable adults, and was awarded police staff member of the year for his work.

In 2015 he was invited to join the EU's radicalisation awareness network and since then has travelled to Berlin, Vienna, and Barcelona to represent Portsmouth and share expertise. He also formed part of an EU delegation to Ankara, Turkey, in 2018 to discuss city responses to extremism.

Charlie has secured EU funding to begin a three-year project with European partners to combat violent extremism and has welcomed visits from UK government ministers and the US Congress to discuss radicalisation.

As well as being a contributory author to published works on international territorial disputes and world political parties, Charlie is currently a NSPCC volunteer in the schools service, and has a passion for community engagement and environmental protection.

 

 

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