If you or someone else are in danger then you may need to call 999. That’s not what Streetsafe is about.

As part of the government’s agenda to tackle violence against women and girls, we are trialling a new online tool called StreetSafe to enable people, particularly women and girls, to report locations where they feel or have felt unsafe and to identify the features on why that location made them feel unsafe.

StreetSafe is also not for reporting crime or incidents.

StreetSafe is a pilot service for anyone to anonymously tell the Police about public places where you have felt or feel unsafe, because of environmental issues, eg street lighting, abandoned buildings or vandalism and/or because of some behaviours, eg being followed or verbally abused.

The focus of the pilot is to identify particular areas and factors that lead to people feeling unsafe and might help offenders either commit or conceal a crime – such as street lighting, abandoned buildings or poorly designed spaces, vandalism, as well as behaviours of individuals or groups of people.

You can report on Streetsafe without needing to give any identity details, so it is anonymous.

Streetsafe asks where you felt unsafe and why. Possible reasons include:

Environmental (related to places/locations) :

• Absence of CCTV
• Badly lit e.g. poor or no street lighting
• Empty buildings or isolated places
• Poor street layout e.g. blind spots and hidden areas
• Restricted visibility e.g. overgrown bushes and trees, walls
• Rundown e.g. derelict buildings, abandoned cars, graffiti, fly-tipping etc.
• Signs of drug or alcohol use
• Other

Behavioural (related to people) :

• Verbal harassment from / by a single stranger
• Verbal harassment from / by a group of people
• Feeling like you are being followed / have previously been followed
• Other forms of harassment

What is StreetSafe?

The data from StreetSafe will be made available to Police and Crime Commissioners and local policing teams to share with local authorities and other stakeholders as part of their community partnerships to have a better understanding of geographical profiles and inform their community safety activities.

If you have any experiences with Streetsafe do let me know, by email.