Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to make it easier for women to report abuse experienced when they have been exercising in public.

This Government has set out an unprecedented ambition to halve violence against women and girls (VAWG) in a decade, and we are determined to use every lever available to us to deliver on that aim.

That means working across Government departments to tackle threats to women’s safety in all areas of their lives, including in public spaces.

This year, the Home Office is providing £15 million to support communities through a variety of preventative interventions such as improved CCTV and streetlighting, public guardianship schemes, and behavioural change initiatives including educational programmes to help change attitudes towards women and girls.

In addition to reporting via 999 and the 101 non-emergency number, anyone who has experienced abuse which is not an emergency can report it through the Single Online Home (SOH) reporting tool (www.police.uk/pu/contact-us/). As of November 2024, 40 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales plus British Transport Police have been onboarded onto the Single Online platform and one further force is currently onboarding.