A bid for government cash has been made to expand a service aimed at making women and girls feel safer on public transport.
Launched in March, the Safer Streets programme is a scheme worth more than £250,000 designed to make the public transport system in Merseyside feel safer for women and girls across the region. More than 50% of women surveyed by the Merseyside Police and Crime Commissioner’s (PCC) Office were identified as feeling unsafe using public transport in the region at night, with 42% uncomfortable during the day.
As a result, the PCC and Liverpool Council launched an effort targeted at potential perpetrators of harassment and sexual violence on the region’s transport network, known as Safer Streets Liverpool, funded by the Home Office. The service has expanded to include a text service enabling women and girls to report sexual violence on the bus network.
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Emily Spurrell, Merseyside PCC, said: “When we spoke to a lot of young women and girls, they were saying they wanted to tell somebody and it was quite often something that they didn’t think would be worthy of reporting to the police, although sometimes it’s a criminal offence so we still encourage people to do that. We know for a lot of young women, they don’t always feel like it’s worth going to the police but they still want somebody to know about it and when we did consultations about it, they said they wanted it to be quick, easy and they can do it then and there and forget about it.”
The new service enables anyone who sees or experiences unwanted attention or sexual harassment while travelling by bus to report it discreetly and safely to the TravelSafe Partnership by texting SAFER to 65007, providing details of the incident including the date, time, location and route number, if it’s known. Mrs Spurrell added: "What the text message service is, if something happens or someone makes you feel uncomfortable and all those issues we’ve talked about around harassment, they have the ability to send a really quick text and Merseytravel will capture all that information and it will help them check CCTV and help us work out the picture around where this is happening and do something about it.
“As part of the wider Safer Streets campaign, we’re working with the bus drivers, taxi drivers so if somebody alerts them to something, they know how to respond, if they are feeling vulnerable they can get them to a place of safety, so there’s the broader issue of where are the patterns of behaviour and how do we tackle it to stop it from happening.” Since the launch in March enhanced CCTV coverage has been set up at city centre bus stations in Liverpool One, Queen Square and Sir Thomas Street, while educational training has been given in 70 schools across the city.
The scheme has been backed by Mayor of Liverpool Joanne Anderson and Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram, while Merseyside Police lead on ending violence against women and girls, Ngaire Wane said: “It is important that, as a partnership, we do as much as we can to give women and girls the confidence to report behaviour which makes them feel unsafe and provide them with support.” Mrs Spurrell said while in its first three months, the campaign had gained traction, there was a long way to go to see real change.
She said: “We want to get a better picture of the data as currently the police data doesn’t tell us. I think it’s getting a lot of coverage, the challenge is that it takes time and monitoring the impact of it is going to be a long-term shift. I think we won’t see the wholesale change yet, we’ll see that hopefully down the line.
“The next challenge is rolling it out, at the minute we only got the funding to launch it in Liverpool and we’re conscious that the Merseytravel network goes across Merseyside and beyond. We’ve put in a bid to the Home Office for funding to see if we can expand it."
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