Category Archives: Violence Against Women

National Personal Safety Day 2025 – Suzy Lamplugh Trust

National Personal Safety Day is an annual event that raises awareness of personal safety issues and recommends ways to reduce violence, aggression, and abuse. Established by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, which campaigns to reduce risk and prevalence of abuse, aggression, and violence – with a specific focus on stalking and harassment, it is supported by Peoplesafe, market leaders in personal safety technology.

A YouGov survey conducted for the Suzy Lamplugh Trust and supported by PeopleSafe in September 2025 has found that one in five workers (20%) feel at risk of violence at work, while nearly a third (31%) reported experiencing at least one incident in the past year. Common behaviours included verbal abuse (21%), bullying or intimidation (14%), physical assault (3%), and sexual harassment or assault (3%).

This year our National Personal Safety Day report ‘Changing Shifts, Changing Safety: Tackling workplace violence across the retail, transport, healthcare and hospitality sectors’ shines a spotlight on the alarming workplace violence occurring across key sectors. Women, disabled workers, LGBTQ+ staff, and Black and minoritised workers were found to experience disproportionately higher levels of harm, underlining the need for an inclusive approach to workplace safety.

Change is urgently needed. Workers responding to our survey have called for stronger preventative measures, including specialist training, robust reporting systems, and visible safety provisions, alongside tougher penalties for perpetrators. We remain concerned that despite the Worker Protection Act mandating employers take reasonable steps to address sexual harassment in the workplace, many employers have still not implemented these steps a year after the Act came into force. It is also imperative that the government strengthen legal frameworks to prevent all forms of gender-based violence in the workplace and close existing loopholes to ensure every worker can feel safe at work.

Key Findings:

31%* of workers experienced violence, aggression, or abuse in the past year.
21% reported verbal abuse or threats, and 14% bullying or intimidation.
Women were approximately eight times more likely than men to experience sexual harassment or assault (6% vs 0.7%).
Healthcare staff were most likely to feel unsafe (25%) and experience incidents (35%).
32% of workers did not report incidents at all, and fewer than one in five saw meaningful action when they did.*
30% of workers said they had received no training or resources from their employer on preventing or managing violence or harassment.

The Suzy Lamplugh Trust is urging government and employers to take decisive action, including:

Closing loopholes in current law by ensuring protection from third-party harassment, such as by customers or clients.
Creating a unified Health and Safety Frameworkto address all forms of violence and abuse in the workplace.
Mandating recording and reporting of all incidents of violence, aggression and gender-based abuse at work.
Embedding Suzy’s Charter for Workplace Safetyacross all sectors to ensure robust reporting systems, bystander training, and clear policies.

Methodology

All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 1003 adults across 4 sectors- Retail, Hospitality, Healthcare and Transport. Fieldwork was undertaken between 5th – 10th September 2025. The survey was carried out online.

*Figures calculated by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, using YouGov figures.

Part of a longer press release at https://www.suzylamplugh.org/news/press-release-national-personal-safety-day-2025

November 17, 2025

Independent review of stalking laws launched – Home Office

Richard Wright KC will lead independent review as part of government mission to halve violence against women and girls in a decade.

To help ensure stalking victims get the protection they need and more offenders are brought to justice, a major independent review of stalking laws was launched on 22 October 2025.

For far too long, victims have been subject to debilitating and vicious abuse at the hands of stalkers who use any means necessary to monitor and control their victims’ lives. Statistics show that 1.4 million people over 16 experienced stalking last year, according to the Crime Survey for England and Wales.

There is also evidence of police forces routinely failing to recognise stalking, and mishandling cases when they do, according to a stalking super-complaint published by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust on behalf of the National Stalking Consortium.

It also highlighted potential gaps in current legislation – flaws that may be hampering the criminal justice system’s ability to tackle stalking effectively and provide victims with the protection they deserve.

That is why the Home Office is acting swiftly on its commitment to review the law following calls from campaigners and survivors who say the system is not doing enough to protect them.

The review will examine whether current laws are strong enough to protect victims and ensure perpetrators are punished. It will also look at how stalking and harassment laws work together – and whether the system needs to be clearer and more joined-up to tackle these dangerous and harrowing crimes.

It will determine whether the law should change so that the police can better spot, investigate and prosecute stalking cases going forward. Crucially, it will also test whether the law can keep up with insidious, emerging forms of stalking, including those carried out online or using new technology.

Leading criminal barrister Richard Wright KC has been appointed to lead the review. He is one of the UK’s most experienced criminal lawyers with extensive experience working on stalking cases, including representing the prosecution in the case of Alice Ruggles who was tragically murdered by her stalker.

The government has published the terms of reference for the review, which will be completed by March 2026. It forms part of the wider Plan for Change to halve violence against women and girls within a decade.

Last year the government unveiled 6 new measures to tackle stalking – including legislating in the Crime and Policing Bill to issue new ‘Right to Know’ statutory guidance to empower the police to release the identity of stalkers at the earliest opportunity.

Further measures include victims being given more protection from offenders by making Stalking Protection Orders more widely available, defining stalking in statutory guidance and setting out a framework to help support services including the police, education and health services to work together and share intelligence on cases.

National standards on stalking perpetrator programmes will also be published to ensure that interventions properly address an offender’s stalking behaviour in a consistent and evidence-based way across England and Wales. New data on stalking offences has also been published by the Home Office to help inform policy and policing decisions on this crime.

Part of a longer press release at https://www.gov.uk/government/news/expert-kc-to-lead-urgent-independent-review-of-stalking-laws

October 27, 2025

One year on from the stalking super complaint findings: Demanding police transparency, accountability and commitment – Suzy Lamplugh Trust

One year on from the stalking super complaint findings – Suzy Lamplugh Trust, on behalf of the National Stalking Consortium, demands police transparency, accountability and commitment to ensure meaningful and systemic change for victims.

25th September 2025 marked the one-year anniversary of the landmark Police Response to Stalking report, a joint investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS), and the College of Policing, which exposed serious and systemic failings in how police forces across England and Wales respond to stalking.

One year on, we remain deeply concerned by the widespread inconsistencies in the implementation of the report’s recommendations. While we welcome the recent National Police Chiefs’ Council’s (NPCC) report and acknowledge the efforts of all forces in making strides towards improved responses, the lack of a national requirement for individual police forces to publicly share their progress seriously hinders the specialist stalking sector’s ability to monitor local progress and hold forces accountable. Without this transparency, it is impossible to fully assess where improvements are being made – and where they are not. While we acknowledge the efforts made by the NPCC to coordinate and support national improvements, the absence of ongoing and publicly available reports from individual forces limits the accountability necessary to drive real change.

To mark this anniversary, Suzy Lamplugh Trust, on behalf of the National Stalking Consortium, has released Ensuring Accountability: One year on from the stalking super complaint findings. We are calling for a uniform and whole-system approach to stalking across all police forces and agencies; urgent and sustained funding to support both victims and frontline professionals, and the active inclusion of the independent specialist stalking sector in training, independently evaluated stalking perpetrator interventions, and any guidance development related to stalking. To turn these commitments into meaningful action, we urge the following:

The NPCC must request biannual published progress reports from individual police forces, with clear metrics, to monitor ongoing implementation of the stalking super-complaint recommendations and ensure accountability where progress is lacking.
Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) must ring-fence funding for specialist stalking support services, ensuring sustainable support for victims and accredited, independently evaluated stalking intervention programmes for perpetrators.
The College of Policing must advocate for independent specialist stalking training development and delivery across all police forces, especially for internal force designated stalking champions, Subject Matter Experts, Stalking Point of Contacts.

Responsibility does not sit with policing alone. The Ministry of Justice has yet to fully implement its recommendation to routinely publish data on Stalking Protection Orders (SPOs), including the number applied for, granted, and breached. Likewise, the Home Office has taken some actions, there are recommendations that have not been fully implemented (such as recommendation 6 to review the impact of the principal crime rule on the identification and investigation of stalking). The Trust urges the Home Office to commit to monitor the impact of the principal crime rule on an ongoing basis. Without a whole system response, the response to stalking will remain fragmented, and victims will continue to fall through the cracks.

See the full briefing here.

Extracts from a long press release at https://www.suzylamplugh.org/News/one-year-on-from-the-stalking-super-complaint-findings-demanding-police-transparency-accountability-and-commitment

October 7, 2025

Suzy Lamplugh Trust, University of Leeds and Keep Britain Tidy launch Safer Parks Project

Parks provide essential spaces for exercise, relaxation and socialising – but research has concluded that most women and girls feel unsafe in parks in some situations.

That’s why we’ve developed this vital initiative together with Dr Anna Barker at the University of Leeds and Keep Britain Tidy, which will ensure park employees and volunteers know how to intervene when they witness public harassment.

Building on the Suzy Lamplugh Trust’s Stand Up Against Street Harassment Training in collaboration with Right To Be and sponsored by L’Oréal Paris, the training is informed by Dr. Barker’s earlier Safer Parks research. Drawing on experiences of women and girls, it uses co-designed scenarios to encourage bystander intervention to tackle harassment in public green spaces.

The training has already been completed by over 250 parks staff and volunteers in West Yorkshire, Cardiff, Doncaster, Hartlepool, London, Rugby and Wigan. The feedback has been exceptional:

99% rated the content of the training as good or excellent.
99% rated the trainer as very good or outstanding.
94% reported feeling extremely or fairly well confident or empowered to act as a bystander.

How to take action

Research from L’Oreal Paris and IPSOS finds that 80% of UK women have experienced harassment, yet 75% say no one stepped in. We are calling on parks staff across the UK to help us expand our work and ensure all green spaces feel safe and welcoming.

If you are an employee or volunteer at a park, request a free online or in-person session for your team (groups of 70+) by emailing training@suzylamplugh.org.
If you want to take part in a session open to anyone, including the public, sign up here. All sessions are free and run for 30 minutes.

If you have any questions, concerns or feedback please contact training@suzylamplugh.org.

Join the campaign

We’ve created a free toolkit to support local action. It includes everything you need to get started, including social media images, printable posters and a template press email.

Download the full toolkit by heading to the Green Flag Award’s website.

Safer Parks Guidance

Download the Safer Park Guidance which highlights how changes in park design and management can make a big impact – suitable for local councils, Friends groups and police and community safety professionals. The materials have also been translated into Arabic, Urdu and Romani.

For full details go to https://www.suzylamplugh.org/news/active-bystander-training-for-parks-staff-across-the-uk

September 24, 2025

Prosecutors urge strangulation survivors to come forward as charges reach record high – Crown Prosecution Service

Data released by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) shows a record number of charges of strangulation reaching courts since the standalone legislation was introduced three years ago.

In the last recorded three-month period, nearly 2,400 charges were prosecuted by the CPS. 9 in every 10 of these charges were linked to domestic abuse.

CPS Direct, the Crown Prosecution Service’s out-of-hours charging service, authorised charges overnight against Cosgrove for attempted murder and intentional strangulation, before handing over the case to CPS North West to prosecute.

Katie Nicolson is a Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor for CPS North West
The CPS and the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) are working together to improve the investigation, prosecution and handling of domestic abuse through the national Domestic Abuse Joint Justice Plan. We are setting about creating cultural change, getting investigations right first time, while working towards our shared goal.
In Q4 2024/25, CPS data shows that 2,395 charges of strangulation and suffocation which reached a first hearing at magistrates’ courts were recorded. 2,214 (92.4%) of these were flagged as related to incidents of domestic abuse.
In 2024/25, CPS data shows that 8,545 charges of strangulation or suffocation which reached a first hearing at magistrates’ courts were recorded. 7,827 (91.6%) of these were flagged as related to incidents of domestic abuse.
In the performance year 24/25, CPS data shows that out of 392 charges of attempted murder which reached a first hearing at magistrates’ courts, 64 were flagged as being related to domestic abuse. That’s nearly 1 in 6 charges of attempted murder being related to domestic abuse.
The CPS define domestic abuse as any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive or threatening behaviour, violence, or abuse (psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional) between those who are or have been intimate partners or family members, regardless of gender or sexuality. Family members include mother, father, son, daughter, sister and grandparents, whether directly related, in laws or step-family. The description is applied to all victims and witnesses irrespective of age.
Section 70 in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 introduced the offence of strangulation or suffocation. The offence came into force on 7 June 2022 and is not retrospective.
Read our prosecution guidance on strangulation or suffocation on our website.
Read our prosecution guidance on domestic abuse on our website.

Extracts from a longer press release at https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/prosecutors-urge-strangulation-survivors-come-forward-charges-reach-record-high