GovWire

This report presents the findings from an independent evaluation of the Safer Streets Fund round 3. The government launched 25 million funding in March 2021 to support locally based solutions that aimed to prevent or reduce violence against women and girls (VAWG) in public spaces, and improve perceptions and feelings of safety in public spaces for all. Most projects aimed to address multiple types of VAWG, anti-social behaviour (ASB) and acquisitive crime across a range of public spaces.

The evaluation included a process and impact evaluation. The process evaluation explored the setup, delivery and implementation experience of SSF3 bid areas to uncover the key enablers and barriers of delivering interventions. The impact evaluation aimed to determine the overall impact of the funding on target populations in funded areas through surveys. This was supplemented by using the Qualitative Impact Protocol (QuIP) methodology, which used qualitative data to understand the causal factors underpinning changes to perceptions of safety.

Overall, there was no evidence of statistically significant impacts from the delivery of SSF3 on improving perceptions of safety in public spaces at the Fund level. However, there were some emerging positive and statistically significant impacts found relating to perceptions of a reduction of VAWG during the day and confidence in the police to deal with VAWG. There was no statistically significant evidence of impacts on perceptions of the amount of acquisitive crime or ASB in the local area.

The findings from the evaluation provide recommendations to the design, delivery and future evaluation of the policy programme.