Police in Lincolnshire to address women's concerns about street safety
A majority of people reporting worries to an app were women
A survey shows major concerns amongst women about safety on Lincolnshire's streets with almost 2 thousand concerns raised ranging from signs of drug use and a lack of CCTV in a 12 month period
A majority of worries reported to the police's streetsafe app were from women.
We spoke to Detective Superintendent Suzanne Davis the force lead for Violence against women and girls in Lincolnshire.
Poor lighting, alcohol or drug use signs and absence of CCTV highlighted
She told us: " It just builds that jigsaw as to where we can make investments and where we can work together to prevent anything happening in the first place."
"In the last year we've had 621 residents and visitors to Lincolnshire who've told us about places they didn't feel safe."
"We ask can we design out places where people don't feel safe?"
"It makes the experience if you're in Lincolnshire for an afternoon at the coast or an evening in the town centre - we want everyone to feel safe."
"Areas that people highlighted concerns about is poor lighting, signs of alcohol or drug use and the absence of CCTV - they're the top 3."
Analysis of StreetSafe reports – 2022/2023:
In the twelve months from April 2022 to March 2023 we recorded 621 StreetSafe reports submitted about places in Lincolnshire.
70% of all the reports were made by females with 23% by males and 7% stating they preferred not to say.
For each report submitted it is possible to add multiple concerns. Across the 621 submissions, a total of 1,960 concerns were reported. 76% of these related to the environment and 24% to behavioural concerns.
Of environmental concerns, the areas most highlighted were poor lighting (23%), signs of drug or alcohol use (21%) and absence of CCTV (17%). Poor street layout (11%), restricted visibility (8%) and empty buildings / isolated places (6%) were also noted.
Of behavioural concerns the reasons most given were feeling like you are being followed (31%), verbal harassment by a group (27%), other forms of harassment (24%) and verbal harassment from a single stranger (16%).
Regions with concerns reported
In terms of submissions per district, Lincoln saw the highest returns with 145 reports followed by Boston (134), East Lindsey (113), West Lindsey (78), North Kesteven (54), South Holland (49) and South Kesteven (48). These figures may give some indication where people have concerns, although they may also reflect local promotion of StreetSafe.