Khan launches £15.6m fund for women and girls to audit unsafe public spaces

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has announced a £15.6m fund for London boroughs to work with women and girls on making parks, town centres and other public spaces safer, alongside the publication on Friday of his refreshed Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy for 2026-29.

Under the scheme, set out by City Hall on 4 September, local authorities will be able to bid for a share of the money to establish community research teams of women and girls who will audit public spaces and recommend changes. Likely proposals include improved CCTV, better lighting and the redesign of paths to remove blind spots.

The fund forms part of what City Hall describes as a wider investment of more than £37m to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG) over the strategy period. Khan called the fund a first of its kind.

"That's why I have launched a new strategy to accelerate our efforts and adapt to the changing threats that women face online, at home and on our streets. This includes a first-ever new fund that will see us work with women and girls to help transform public spaces across our capital."

Khan said the epidemic of violence against women and girls was "a global disgrace that shames us all", adding: "What so many women and girls have had to endure and continue to endure is unacceptable, and every aspect of society has a part to play in changing this."

The applicants for the money are the boroughs rather than community groups directly. "By giving a voice to women and girls who know their local areas best, we can work with local authorities to make these spaces safer and more welcoming at all times of day," Khan said.

City Hall has not published the fund's official name, the period it covers, the application window, eligibility criteria or any cap on individual awards, and has not said whether the £15.6m is new money or reallocated from existing budgets held by the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC), which will administer it.

Part of the £37m headline figure has been announced before. It includes a £1m package of measures to support boys and young men unveiled by Khan on 2 June, which his office said would fund work with vulnerable boys in schools and pupil referral units through the Violence Reduction Unit, a programme for fathers and footballing mentors in communities.

The package also carries a further £6m for legal advice, counselling and other support services for victims and survivors, and £2.4m for those affected by child sexual exploitation and grooming gangs. No delivery body has been named for the £2.4m element.

The strategy is the third Khan has published since 2016 and covers three areas — preventing VAWG, supporting victims and stopping perpetrators — with cross-cutting themes including misogynistic attitudes, safer public spaces, online and tech-enabled abuse, and partnership working. It was originally promised for 2025.

Khan said he had overseen £318m of investment in tackling VAWG since taking office in 2016. MOPAC's own draft Police and Crime Plan for 2025-2029 states that the Mayor has overseen £233m since 2016. Neither figure has been independently audited and the basis of each is not defined in the published material.

Andrea Simon, the Victims' Commissioner for London, said: "London needs this holistic and ambitious vision for tackling violence against women and girls (Vawg), and I am pleased that the strategy acknowledges how important specialist support is for victims' recovery, as well as having a focus on preventing the spread of harmful misogynistic attitudes and responding to the growing scale of technology-facilitated abuse."

Nahar Choudhury, chief executive of Solace Women's Aid, said the strategy "rightly recognises that supporting survivors means addressing the wide range of factors contributing to violence against women and girls". She added: "We're especially heartened to see dedicated investment in work to challenge the manosphere and engage boys and young men as part of the solution, as well as specialist services supporting girls and young women."

The audit method itself has been used in London before. In 2024, Transport for London, in partnership with MOPAC, ran a trial of women's safety audits across five boroughs, focusing in part on transport hubs. A MOPAC decision signed on 1 August 2023 approved the transfer of up to £125,000 to TfL to commission that pilot.