Christine Jardine is to bring forward a bill in the Commons which would make it a legal requirement for women’s safety to be published as a condition of planning approval for major developments.
An assessment of the impact on women’s safety would need to be published as a condition of planning approval for major developments.
She said:
We need to go back to basics and take the necessary steps to protect women. For far too long women have been excluded from the process.
This Bill would provide women with the foundations they need to have more agency and feel less vulnerable in their daily lives.
Urban planning must take into consideration the issue of women’s safety. Such issues as well-lit and open areas are paramount to designing spaces without a gender bias.
This is all about enabling women to plan and go about their lives with safety and security. Women should be confident in knowing that their concerns have been considered so that they feel safer in living their lives.
I hope the Government will support this Bill and support this campaign to future proof women’s safety.
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6 Comments
If an assessment of safety is to be a condition of planning approval why limit it to women only? Why not cover everybody: women, trans people, non-binary people and men?
The suggestion that well-lit roads need to be provided to keep women safe from attack is very dangerous – it shifts the blame from the unacceptable actions of the attacker to the issue of whether adequate lighting was provided. This is a very short step from blaming women who get attacked if they could have taken a well-lit route but chose to take a less well lit route.
Quibbling over wording, guys? If it’s safe for women, it’s safe for others as well. And I’d rather have well-lit routes than ‘dark ones because that might shift blame’.
A big issue in urban design isn’t so much lighting, by the way, as dead space. Eg, to get from a train station to a bus station, having to walk through streets that are deserted when shops/offices are shut, or there are no buildings at all.
I don’t believe we need new legislation. The NPPF already (para 97) says that “Planning policies and decisions should promote public safety …. [by] … anticipating and addressing possible malicious threats ….”
“Policies for relevant areas …. and the layout and design of developments, should be informed by the most up-to-date information available from the police and other agencies about the nature of potential threats and their implications. This includes appropriate and proportionate steps that can be taken to reduce vulnerability, increase resilience and ensure public safety and security.”
In our LPA, all major applications are referred to the Police, who employ specialist officers (ours is female) using their national “Secure by Design” principles. https://www.securedbydesign.com/
Maybe Scotland hasn’t got that system in place but it works well here.
@Tony Vickers
Christine Jardine may represent a Scottish constituency but as planning is a devolved issue, any legislation she is proposing in the House of Commons will not affect Scotland. I would have thought that Christine Jardine would have known this and would have therefore researched planning laws in England before making any suggestions for change. From what you say, perhaps she didn’t.
>An assessment of the impact on women’s safety would need to be published as a condition of planning approval for major developments.
Whilst important, it really needs to be explicitly included in local authority development strategies and plans, ie. the framework within which planning applications are made.
This would help ensure 50.6% of the population have a platform on which to raise their issues and concerns in a way that actually contributes to the creation of a less hostile urban and parkland environment.