The campaign will focus on areas of Edmonton where there are higher reports of attacks on women, reports Grace Howarth, Local Democracy Reporter

Domestic abuse — credit Dev Benjamin via Unsplash

Enfield Council hopes to join forces with businesses across the borough to support the rollout of a new charter that will prioritse women’s safety.

The council signed up to City Hall’s ‘Women’s Night Safety Charter‘ in 2022, which aims to work with businesses to create safe environments.

During a health and safe communities scrutiny panel yesterday (Wednesday 25th), the council announced a “reboot” of the charter which will be launched over the next six months in Upper Edmonton and Edmonton Green wards – as these are “the areas we see the largest level of sexual offences and street harassment”.

Jonathan Toy, head of community safety, explained: “The charter sets out seven pledges, and encourages businesses to sign up, to create a safe environment for women and girls.”

Speaking about the last two years, he said: “What we haven’t done up until very recently is really turned our attention to getting our businesses signed up to that charter.

“There are a very small number, certainly not the numbers we’d like, and we felt it was important we really put some energy behind that.

“With the support of [cabinet member for community cohesion and enforcement] Gina Needs, we started a pilot in one specific area of the borough, the area we see the largest level of sexual offences and street based harassment, in order to test the work we’re doing.

“But we have an ambition of expanding that across the whole borough.”

Businesses can sign up for council-funded safety training as well as pledging to follow the charter itself.

In addition, ‘Ask for Angela’ is a customer-facing campaign where customers give a codeword to staff when feeling unsafe, ‘Wave’ is aimed at helping staff identify vulnerability and put interventions in place to support visitors to their businesses, and ‘Safe Havens’ is a practical way to let people know that a form of support is available.

The seven pledges set out in the charter are for businesses to nominate a champion within the organisation; demonstrate to staff and customers that the organisation takes women’s safety seriously; tell customers and staff what to do if harassed; encourage reporting; to train staff to believe women’s reports and ensure they’re responded to and recorded; and to design spaces to make sure they’re safer for women at night.

The London mayor’s Safer Business Network was consulted as part of the charter’s development, along with the police and other community safety groups.

Tottenham Hotspur Football Club has also signed up to the charter as a “local anchor institute” which Jonathan hops will encourage other businesses to join.

On Friday evening (27th) council officers plan to walk along Fore Street in Edmonton with female colleagues and councillors connected to the campaign “to get a sense of what’s going on in the area”.

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