Mayor's Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy 2018-2021

A safer city for women and girls

A wide-ranging programme to improve safety in public spaces at all times of day and night including a new Women’s Night Safety Charter, partnership to tackle unwanted sexual behaviour on the transport network and a new campaign to tackle attitudes of everyday sexism and misogyny
Working with partners across London to gain accreditation to the UN Women’s Safer Cities and Safe Public Spaces initiative
Work to encourage positive attitudes, behaviours and healthy relationships amongst children and young people with specialist advocates in schools and pupil referral units, Safer Schools Officers and a whole school prevention pilot in Croydon
Supporting a Good Work Standard to address the #MeToo phenomenon and ensure abuse is not tolerated in the workplace

Working with police and criminal justice partners to ensure the most effective handling of dangerous individuals including over £3m to expand the rehabilitative Drive project which provides additional support to help reform the behaviour of perpetrators
New measures to tackle stalking
Calling on the Government to create a register for perpetrators of domestic abuse and violence, and for tougher sentences for image-based offenses such as ‘upskirting’ and ‘revenge porn’

£200,000 to support the London Councils Harmful Practices programme – training nurses, midwives and social workers to recognise abuses such as FGM and intervene
A complete review of adherence to the Victims’ Code of Practice, a new online portal for victims of crime, and a study into rape cases from a victim’s perspective
Significant investment in general and specialist services for victims including £13m for sexual violence services, £5m for Domestic Violence services, and over £9m for services in London’s boroughs

The Strategy was informed by a major consultation exercise which included:

Consultation with survivors - 15 focus groups with 133 survivors of Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG), 19 one-to-one interviews and an online survey with 90 respondents.
12 consultation workshops on evidence and data sharing, female offenders, BAME, perpetrators, prevention, enforcement, support for victims, prostitution, harmful practices, priority boroughs plus a roundtable with survivors and another with partners and stakeholders.
400 face-to-face interviews with members of the public across the areas of London where VAWG is most prevalent.

An Integrated Impact Assessment for the VAWG Strategy is available here.

The Mayor of London has created the Women’s Night Safety charter to make London a city where all women feel confident and welcome at night. The charter is part of the Mayor’s Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy and London’s commitment to the UN Women Safe Cities and Safe Public Spaces global initiative.