Cumbrians urged to use Street Safe to report feeling unsafe

Cumbria Police are encouraging the public to tell them about where they feel, or have felt unsafe, via the Street Safe online tool.

The focus of this 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.

Detective inspector for Cumbria Police Matt bellshaw said: "We can react to crimes but part of this is to improve trust in the public, pursue perpetrators and to create safer spaces. A lot of the work we've done is around education and what's inappropriate in terms of behaviour."

Add to this, Inspector Peter Hasting said: "People could be reporting things for a number of reasons. It could be environmental issues such as signs of drug and alcohol use in an area, damage, or it could be behavioral such as groups of men or boys, maybe verbal harassments or just feeling generally unsafe.

"The tool is there so woman and girls can tell us exactly where the problem is, what it is, and then we can go away, review the information and normally invite our partners and have a multi-agency approach to address those issues."

StreetSafe is anonymous. There will be no questions about your identity, such as your name or date of birth. However, there are optional questions about crime reporting as well as your age, sex, gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, illnesses or disabilities. They ask for this information because it helps give a better understanding of the person's concern.

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.