Anna Sabine
MP for Frome and East Somerset · Liberal Democrat · United Kingdom
“Turning to online spaces, the proposal to highlight trusted news sources on social media is welcome, but unfortunately this is just a sticking plaster over the fundamental issue that big social media platforms are already rigged against truth, fairness and impartiality.”
“The Green Paper rightly recognises the severe financial challenges facing our public service broadcasters, which have been vividly exposed by recent devastating cuts at the BBC.”
“T4. We have a shortage of music teachers in this country. A system of bursaries was in place for those taking music postgraduate certificates in education, but after the number of students increased slightly, that bursary system was pulled, yet we still do not have enough music teachers.”
“I would also like to start by congratulating the England football team on their win yesterday. While fans are rightly excited to finally see England bring it home this summer, some world cup tickets this year have surged to over £24,000.”
“Some have engaged constructively and early, but in Somerset there was unfortunately no consultation with me at all. Instead, I was given a list of locations that had already been chosen, none of which were located in Frome and East Somerset.”
“For many of my constituents, Frome community hospital is an important community hub, where people access lifesaving care for themselves and their families.”
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“Turning to online spaces, the proposal to highlight trusted news sources on social media is welcome, but unfortunately this is just a sticking plaster over the fundamental issue that big social media platforms are already rigged against truth, fairness and impartiality. The real threat to our democracy are the harmful platforms themselves, which use algorithms deliberately engineered to amplify foreign disinformation while systematically choking out trusted journalistic sources. Should the Secretary of State not be focusing the full weight of her Department, and that of her colleagues in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, on cleaning up social media platforms once and for all, rather than fighting a losing battle against bad actors on systems that are built to work against us?”
“The Green Paper rightly recognises the severe financial challenges facing our public service broadcasters, which have been vividly exposed by recent devastating cuts at the BBC. The Liberal Democrats have long proposed that the BBC World Service should be fully funded directly from Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office budgets, protecting its vital global footprint while freeing up £221 million a year to be reinvested at home. Will the Secretary of State take on board our proposals? What urgent conversations has she had with her Foreign Office colleagues to make that a reality?”
“T4. We have a shortage of music teachers in this country. A system of bursaries was in place for those taking music postgraduate certificates in education, but after the number of students increased slightly, that bursary system was pulled, yet we still do not have enough music teachers. Would the Minister please consider reinstating that bursaries scheme, which would allow us to have enough teachers coming through into the system to give all the children in this country the music education that they deserve?”
“I would also like to start by congratulating the England football team on their win yesterday. While fans are rightly excited to finally see England bring it home this summer, some world cup tickets this year have surged to over £24,000. Fans should not be forced to choose between remortgaging their homes or missing out on supporting their country. Will the Minister therefore support the Liberal Democrats’ call for an international fans charter to safeguard supporters against unfair ticket pricing?”
“My constituents deserve a community hospital that reflects the needs of a growing town and a process that treats them as genuine partners in shaping it. At a time when the Government are closing down Healthwatch, I welcome the Minister’s thoughts on how we can prioritise patients’ voices in health provision.”
“That is no fault of the patients or of the staff trying to care for them. It is a structural failure that leaves whole communities at a disadvantage because they happen to sit on the wrong side of a line on a map. However, in the Somer valley in my constituency, things are working rather differently. There, the relationship between Bath and North East Somerset council and the ICB appears to be working well, with genuine collaboration shaping local services. It shows what can be achieved when councils, communities and ICBs sit down together as equal partners from the outset. I ask the Minister to ensure that the Department reinforces to ICBs, including Somerset, that consultation with local MPs and councils on community hub proposals is not optional but essential if communities are to be properly heard.”
“Some have engaged constructively and early, but in Somerset there was unfortunately no consultation with me at all. Instead, I was given a list of locations that had already been chosen, none of which were located in Frome and East Somerset. I do not believe that that is how engagement with elected representatives is supposed to work, which matters particularly for constituencies like mine. Much of east Somerset sits across different local authority and health boundaries. Many of my constituents’ usual experience of hospital care is at a hospital that until recently was outside of our own ICB area altogether. When that hospital does not have proper joint working arrangements with our ICB, those patients find themselves effectively pushed to the back of the queue, simply because joined-up planning between the two systems is not happening.”
“Friend the Member for South Cotswolds talked about ambulances queueing; as I understand it, one of the main reasons that ambulances queue at our general hospital is because, at the other end of the hospital, patients cannot be discharged to community settings, yet we are cutting beds in those settings. I am therefore unconvinced that those cuts can be justified. I have continued to push for the restoration of the beds at Frome hospital, but I have also spoken to the ICB about the possibility of the hospital becoming one of the community hubs that the Government have rolled out, which I think could be a really good opportunity for semi-rural areas. Across the country, ICBs are taking very different approaches to consulting MPs on the roll-out of these hubs.”
“For many of my constituents, Frome community hospital is an important community hub, where people access lifesaving care for themselves and their families. In fact, my husband’s life was saved by a team at Frome hospital earlier this year when he went into anaphylactic shock and was able to get to the urgent care department in Frome much quicker than he could have got to the general hospital in Bath. I put on record my thanks to the nurses who treated him that day. Last summer, Somerset ICB cut the number of beds at Frome hospital as part of a test and learn consultation, the criteria for which seem very unclear to me. I know from visiting the Royal United hospital, our general hospital in Bath, that one of the biggest challenges facing it is getting patients discharged to appropriate community settings. My hon.”
“I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for securing this debate. I will talk largely about Frome community hospital, but a lot of what she has said about test and learn and trial closures applies to Frome as well. I will also talk about the issues that occur when communities are served by organisations in different health authority boundaries and the impact of a lack of communications there. Community hospitals, as we have heard, are the backbone of local healthcare. They keep people closer to home, ease pressure on our general hospitals and allow families to support loved ones through recovery without the burden of long journeys. That is especially so in more rural areas like my constituency, where travel times can be long and public transport is limited.”
“I was recently on a cross-party visit to Israel and Palestine. We met the Norwegian Refugee Council and talked about the issue of dual use items, where the Israeli Government do not let certain items into Gaza because they argue they can be used for terrorist purposes. That includes situations where young children are able to leave Gaza to get hearing implants in countries such as Jordan, but are then not allowed back into Gaza because the component parts are considered to be dual use items. What pressure can the Government bring to bear on the Israeli Government to prevent the weaponisation of this issue against the Gazan people?”
“Transport is not just a technical issue, but a question of who gets to participate fully in public life and who is excluded from it, which is why I will continue to campaign for the Government to include mention of women and girls’ safety in the national planning policy framework. I welcome much of the Government’s rhetoric about the importance of improved public transport and the fact they are making spending commitments to support it, but I urge them not to forget places like Frome and East Somerset, where the potential for economic growth is huge if only people could get where they need to go.”
“We need the franchising powers in the Bus Services Act 2025 to be accessible to county councils, not just combined authorities with mayoral structures. We need a duty on operators to provide genuine contingency when services fail and guarantees that, when new housing developments are approved, transport infrastructure is not an optional extra or included in section 106 agreement only to be quietly watered down later. I have spoken in this place before about the link between transport and safety, and in particular about women in my constituency who have told me that they gave up running, cycling or going out after dark in the winter because waiting at isolated bus stops on unlit country lanes did not feel safe.”
“Such stories represent the lived experience of a significant portion of my constituency. The Government’s briefing on the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill speaks of bringing power closer to communities, but devolution delivered through metro mayors in large urban centres offers little comfort to places like Frome and East Somerset. We have seen millions for buses being poured into the West of England combined authority, which is welcome, only to find that the focus is on getting people in and out of Bristol even more effectively than they currently are. Devolution that does not reach rural communities is not devolution: it is a redistribution of power to a slightly different tier of city. We need a funding model for bus services that does not treat rural routes as commercially unviable afterthoughts.”
“I raise this incident not to criticise one operator on one morning—in fairness, the operator has apologised—but because it illustrates something systemic, which is that when the margin for error is zero because there is no back-up or redundancy, any failure becomes a crisis. That is the reality for communities whose transport links are threadbare to begin with. I have constituents who cannot take a job in the next town because the bus does not run early enough to get them there. I represent many young people, including those in my own family, who cannot get a job or see friends because there is no suitable public transport. My constituency is a radiotherapy desert—without a car, there is not one place in my constituency where you could reach radiotherapy treatment within the recommended timescales.”
“I thank the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) for securing this debate on one of my favourite topics. I represent the market towns of Frome, Midsomer Norton and Radstock, as well as many larger villages, such as Evercreech and Peasedown St John. On 18 May, five services failed to run on the 172 and 171 bus routes that serve Midsomer Norton, which meant that for nearly three hours during the morning rush hour, between half-past 6 and half-past 9, there was no bus service at all. I have had emails from constituents for whom it meant missing a shift at work or missing medical appointments.”
“I hope Ministers will co-ordinate with colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Transport and elsewhere to ensure that people in Frome and East Somerset can get the health services they need in the places they need them and in an affordable way.”
“In both the cases I have set out, there seems to be a lack of mechanism to force ICBs or trusts to consult local people and a total lack of sanction if they fail to do so. People who live in Frome and the surrounding villages are the experts in their own lives, and they have helpful, constructive and innovative ideas to input into decision making around the future of local health services. The Government are also overseeing the removal of Healthwatch and the Citizens’ Senate, two additional bodies that centre patients’ voices at the heart of discussions about their care. I am worried that without those bodies being replaced or without mechanisms in place to ensure good consultation, communities risk being entirely unheard in decisions that will, for some, affect their daily lives.”
“A lack of public transport and increasing fuel costs place a huge additional stress on families and carers. Two weeks ago, I was pleased to meet the Minister for Care to discuss the Government’s plan for neighbourhood health centres, a policy I broadly welcome and one that I believe could genuinely benefit parts of my constituency. In the meeting, the Minister was explicit that our integrated care board was required to consult local MPs and other stakeholders on their plans for the new health centres. Not only has our ICB not been in touch, but when we followed up with them ourselves, we were told two things: first, they had no idea they were expected to engage with MPs on this matter; and secondly, they had already decided where the hubs would go, without consulting anyone else.”
“My friend was in Bath for five weeks, then had to go to Wincanton Hospital for another seven weeks as there were no beds in Frome, and this was so hard for her family, who live miles away.” The people of Frome and its surrounding villages rely on their community hospital, yet they woke up one morning to find that a decision had, in effect, already been made to reduce its capacity, a decision that means some of the most vulnerable members of our community will not have a bed in a local community hospital setting if they are discharged from our general hospital in Bath. For an elderly person, for a carer managing on their own or for those without access to a car, the risk of being placed in a community hospital somewhere else in Somerset is a serious barrier to suitable care.”
“I have serious concerns about whether the evidence provided so far is strong enough to justify making these changes permanent, and I am deeply troubled by how little the community has been involved in that conversation. I decided to do my own consultation, hosting a pop-up in Frome two weeks ago, and asking local people to tell us why the hospital was important for them. One constituent wrote, “I feel strongly that Frome Hospital provides so many services for local people. When I hear from elderly friends who have ended up with long stays in Bath, I find it incomprehensible that once they reach a certain stage of recovery they cannot be moved nearer home.” Another constituent said, “It is a shame we must lose beds.”
“The King’s Speech brings forward plans to abolish NHS England, but in my constituency of Frome and East Somerset, NHS Somerset has been running what it calls a test and learn exercise at Frome community hospital. For six months the number of beds was temporarily reduced from 24 to 16, and at the end of that period the test and learn was simply extended for another six months, meaning that for a full year capacity has been reduced and no full consultation with communities about these changes has been required. People are rightly concerned that a reduction in their local service will require them to travel further afield, the cost of which is rising.”
“One of the many challenges facing rural constituencies such as mine is the rising cost of fuel. When the war in Iran pushed up prices, I had constituents telling me they could no longer afford their planned orders of heating oil and would try to manage without heating for as long as they could. As we might expect, residents in Frome and East Somerset rely heavily on car use, and therefore fuel such as diesel and petrol, to access health services. I am very concerned about the lack of community input into decisions being made about health services, which disproportionately affect those in communities who have to drive or get the bus, or run patient transport services in rural areas.”
“Thousands of people across the country—although possibly not the Arts Minister—are very excited for the world cup this summer, but that excitement is being ruined by the prospect of fans, not football, coming home. Under new US border directives, fans face having their social media history weaponised against them, with the threat of being turned away at the gates for as little as sharing an unflattering meme of President Trump. Will the Secretary of State urgently meet with US counterparts to ensure British fans are not denied entry at the border, and will she demand that the US embassy picks up the tab for tickets and travel for any fan unfairly denied entry?”
“Part of my constituency falls in the West of England mayoral combined authority, which oversees some local bus services. Although recent Government funding has been allocated to improve bus transport across the authority, much of it appears to be concentrated on getting people in and out of Bristol, rather than around the surrounding towns and villages. If the Government are committed to driving economic growth, should they not recognise the importance of investing in reliable rural transport networks to enable such communities to grow and thrive?”
“The crisis facing voluntary and community organisations is severe, and we stand to lose the organisations that feed the hungry, support the isolated, counsel the bereaved and reach those in crisis when statutory services cannot. That is unacceptable. Community centres and voluntary groups are indispensable to the strength and resilience of our communities. I hope the Minister will encourage the Government to consider Lib Dem proposals to expand community events, reduce loneliness and protect these centres from closure so that they can continue their crucial work in fostering community cohesion.”
“It is an excellent organisation that works around the country to identify community centres and places that are important to local communities, and it invites local young people who are not in employment, education or training to come along to refurbish them. Those spaces could be community centres or sports grounds, and Volunteer It Yourself is about to announce a project with the Music Venue Trust to refurbish music venues. That is a fantastic way of solving two problems: refurbishing places that may not otherwise be refurbished and getting young people into education and training. It has a live project in Deptford, which it invited me down to visit, and I would happily take a cross-party group of interested MPs for a couple of hours to see what those young people are up to.”
“The groups create space for parents to discuss the challenges they are facing, and volunteers are trained to support those experiencing domestic abuse and refer parents to other services, if needed. Centres such as The Hive and Southside face several key challenges. Securing funding is time-consuming and difficult. Leases are very tricky to negotiate, and I was happy to help The Hive with that issue. Buildings are costly to run and hard to maintain, and many centres operate in isolation without the networks or resources they need. I will quickly depart from my speech to mention Volunteer It Yourself, which is so good that I am mentioning it even though it is not in my constituency. I was pleased to meet that organisation yesterday, and I was going to write to introduce it to the Minister, but I am glad to do it in person now.”
“The Hive in Peasedown St John is a powerful example of the vital support that community centres offer, including a community fridge, a citizens advice bureau, family support, financial guidance, a youth worker for local people and access to the Peasedown community library. Another organisation, Southside, runs community hub groups across north-east Somerset, including a regular group that I visited in Writhlington last year. Its after-school sessions are run entirely by volunteers who entertain children with painting, dancing and outdoor activities, while parents are able to sit down with a cup of tea, something many have not had a chance to do all day.”
“However, because of decades of real-terms funding cuts, a cost of living squeeze on donations, rising operational costs and the Government’s decision to increase employer national insurance contributions without exempting voluntary organisations, pressure on these organisations has piled up. Community centres are vital for tackling the loneliness epidemic in our country, which is why the Liberal Democrats launched our plan to introduce a new wave of third spaces, called hobby hubs, to help to rebuild in-person connection. The initiative would support existing community spaces to expand the services they offer and reach even more people who need them. In my constituency, I am fortunate to have many outstanding community services, but I want to highlight two in particular.”
“It reflects their importance and the undeniable need for the role they play in strengthening our communities. Voluntary organisations act as vital bridges between individuals, particularly those who may feel isolated or without strong family connections. The groups that people find at these local hubs can effectively become their family. The organisations also serve as a safety net, catching people who fall outside Government or other public support. With over 1.8 million people currently on NHS mental health waiting lists, some community centres have stepped up to run suicide prevention projects and mental health peer support groups, filling gaps that statutory services cannot reach.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I thank the hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman) for securing this debate on a subject he is very passionate and knowledgeable about. He is a fellow bassoon player—I hope I am right in saying that—and music ensembles are another brilliant example of community groups. I also know that, like me, he supports the wider cause of music education, which could not take place easily without community spaces. At the heart of every thriving community are its voluntary organisations. They are essential for fostering social cohesion and community spirit, and for enabling support and solidarity when people need it most. Across Great Britain, there are around 21,000 community centres and halls, and in 2022 we were home to 166,000 voluntary organisations. That is no accident.”
“Holly lives in a village in my constituency and was flashed not once but three times by the same man while out walking in the countryside. When Holly came to see me, it was in a spirit of outrage that this had happened to her, and with a determination that we should do something about it. UN Women UK has found that 71% of women have experienced sexual harassment in public spaces. Most of them never report it—not because it did not happen but because they believe nothing will be done. That alone should give us pause. When the House has debates about women’s safety and place, we often talk about the same issues—quite rightly—that women face when they are out and about. Do they take the longer, well-lit route? Do they run before dawn, or wait until it is light? Do they walk home, or pay for a taxi they cannot afford?”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the impact of planning on women’s safety in rural areas. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I secured this debate because I think the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has made an oversight; I hope it is a genuine oversight and that MHCLG is willing to rectify it. I am genuinely delighted that the Minister for Housing and Planning is here to respond, as I have been trying to contact him about this issue for some time, with no reply from his Department. I am confident that when he hears about the issues at first hand, he will be keen to act. I want to start by paying tribute to my constituent Holly, who was the catalyst for this whole discussion.”
“That sounds like an excellent scheme. We have a similar one in Frome that I commend to the House. In rural areas, most of the questions I just asked do not even apply. There may not be street lighting, there are no taxis and, as in swathes of my constituency, there is no mobile phone signal.”
“Coincidentally, earlier this year I was contacted separately by a brilliant urban designer called Natasha, who drew my attention to the fact that the Government have set out an excellent strategy to combat violence against women and girls, and a national planning policy framework, but at the moment the two things make no reference to each other, which is a shocking oversight.”
“Certainly. That sounds excellent and I will come to lots of nerdy points about design guidance in due course. My constituency of Frome and East Somerset is, by any measure, a beautiful part of England. It is also a place where the challenges I am describing are felt with particular intensity. Inspired by Holly, last autumn I launched a survey to hear directly from women in my constituency about how safe they feel. Their responses were sobering. Women wrote about being followed on dark country lanes that had no street lighting; about waiting for buses on isolated roads with no shelter, no CCTV and no way of summoning help; about giving up running and cycling all together, not because they lacked the inclination but because they simply did not feel safe doing so; and about the constant, exhausting vigilance required just to get home.”
“Those are good objectives, but in some instances they are pursued without adequate consideration of what they mean for women’s safety. A dark, overgrown footpath may be an excellent habitat, but it may also be a route that women no longer feel able to use. We should not have to choose between environmental policy and women’s safety. Without gender-responsive planning guidance, that tension will not be managed; it will simply produce worse outcomes by default. The NPPF is not a neutral document; it is a statement of priorities, and right now it does not include women’s safety among them.”
“The omission also creates a tension with the Government’s international commitments. UK infrastructure policy is explicitly aligned with the UN’s sustainable development goals, including SDG 5.2, on eliminating violence against women and girls, and SDG 11.7, on safe and inclusive public spaces explicitly for women and girls. The NPPF discusses the safety and design quality of green space at length, but does not mention either of those commitments. A further tension is emerging that I do not think has received sufficient attention—the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) alluded to it. Nature recovery and biodiversity policies are rightly being pursued with increasing ambition, with green corridors, rewilded verges and, in some cases, reduced lighting to support wildlife.”
“The default is a multi-use games area: a hard, caged, male-dominated space that girls report, in study after study, feeling excluded from and unsafe in. Girls do not lack interest in outdoor space; they lack outdoor spaces that were designed with them in mind. The consequence is that girls retreat indoors earlier, exercise less and lose the freedom of movement that is so fundamental to adolescent development and mental health. This is not a minor amenity issue; it is a public health issue—and it starts with planning. The principles are well established, but without explicit inclusion in national policy, they remain optional. As a result, women’s safety in public space is a postcode lottery—and nowhere is that lottery more consequential than in rural areas where the baseline is already so much lower.”
“I want to be precise about that means: MHCLG was asked whether it should do better on this issue, received evidence it should and chose not to act. That is not an oversight; it is a decision. International best practice in gender-responsive planning is really well established: clear sight lines and natural surveillance; active street frontages that keep eyes on the street; thoughtful lighting design—not simply more but better lights, placed in the right locations; and safe, well-connected public transport routes that do not leave women stranded after dark. Make Space for Girls, the UK campaign that has done forensic and compelling work on how public space is designed for teenagers, has shown that the spaces we build for young people—the parks, play areas and recreational spaces—are overwhelmingly designed with boys in mind.”
“That tells us that, alarmingly, the people responsible for designing our spaces and places apparently do not understand, despite huge bodies of evidence, why planning with women in mind might be relevant or useful. That raises serious concerns not just about the policy position but about the Department’s basic understanding of the relationship between planning and women’s lives. What makes that omission particularly hard to defend is that it was not an accident. The previous Government explicitly raised this issue in the 2022 NPPF consultation, asking whether greater emphasis should be placed on making women and girls feel safe in public places. Responses were received, but nothing changed in the December 2025 revision, under the current Government.”
“A chapter about healthy and safe communities which does not acknowledge that safety is not experienced equally is not, with respect, a chapter about healthy and safe communities. It is a chapter about healthy and safe communities for some people. In January I wrote to both the Minister for Housing and Planning and the Minister for Safeguarding to raise the issue directly. I have yet to receive a substantive response from either of them, but when The Guardian asked MHCLG for comment, the response received was frankly jaw-dropping. MHCLG said: “The NPPF is a planning document. It sets out guidelines for housebuilding and planning in England. The VAWG strategy is about protecting women and girls from violence and misogyny.” The Department said it was “unclear as to why anyone would expect the two things to be combined”.”
“On 16 December 2025, the Government published the revised national planning policy framework, and just two days later they published their violence against women and girls strategy, rightly declaring VAWG a national emergency and committing to a whole-of-society approach to prevention. Those two documents should have been in conversation with each other, but they were not. The revised NPPF contains no reference whatsoever to women, girls, gendered safety or violence against women in the built environment—not one. Chapter 8, on promoting healthy and safe communities, discusses safety, health and crime, but does so in entirely gender-blind terms, despite overwhelming evidence that safety is not experienced equally by all people in all spaces.”
“They happen disproportionately in spaces that are poorly lit, poorly overlooked and poorly served by transport. The consequences extend far beyond the incidents themselves. Girls’ loss of freedom in public space is directly and measurably linked to poor mental health. Women who feel unsafe curtail their physical activity, social lives and working patterns. Violence against women and girls costs hundreds of lives a year, alongside widespread and serious harm that ripples outwards into health services, the economy and the fabric of communities. To circle back to my opening point, we know what works, but the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government seems determined not to implement it.”
“I absolutely agree with the hon. Member. I will talk about lighting in due course. In her book “Invisible Women”, Caroline Criado-Perez documents how the built environment has historically been designed around a default that is male, and how data on street use, transport planning and public space has been gathered without disaggregating by sex. The result is infrastructure that works reasonably well for men and imposes a hidden cost of time, money, anxiety and constrained freedom on women. That cost is not inevitable. It is a design choice, and it can be designed out. Women are four times more likely to experience sexual assault than men, and more than twice as likely to experience stalking. Many such offences happen not in the home but in public spaces—on paths, at bus stops, in car parks and on the routes between places.”
“They were asking to walk home safely, to go for a run, to catch a bus without calculating the risk, and to move through their own communities with the same unconsidered freedom that most men take entirely for granted. This is not a radical demand; it is a basic one, and the tools to deliver it in planning policy, design guidance and cross-Government strategy are well within our grasp. I urge the Minister to act. The evidence is there, the need is clear, and the gap in policy is glaring and, as I have shown today, entirely without justification. Let us work together to close it.”
“A whole-of-society approach that excludes the Department responsible for shaping the physical environment is not, in any meaningful sense, a whole-of-society approach—it is a strategy with a very large hole in it. The Government’s ambition to halve violence against women and girls within a decade is genuinely welcome, but ambition without structural delivery mechanisms will not achieve it. Right now, the NPPF—the primary lever for shaping how this country is built—contains nothing that would materially help to deliver it. That gap must be addressed if the strategy is to be credible. The women who responded to my survey in Frome and East Somerset were not asking for the extraordinary. They were not asking for anything that other countries have not already delivered.”
“I also urge the Government to look seriously at gender budgeting as a tool for local authorities when they design streets, parks and public spaces. Gender budgeting does not mean ringfencing money for women; it means asking at the point of allocation, “Who benefits from this spending? Is the distribution equitable?” Vienna, Helsinki and Seoul have all used gender budgeting in the design of public space to reveal and correct the systemic underfunding of spaces that women and girls actually use. It is a practical, evidence-based mechanism, and it is entirely compatible with the fiscal constraints that local authorities are operating under. We should be using it here. Finally, I hope the Minister will ensure that MHCLG is formally integrated into cross-Government delivery of the VAWG strategy.”
“Alongside that, I urge the Government to take the following specific steps without delay: to amend the NPPF to explicitly require the consideration of women and girls’ safety, particularly in chapters 8 and 12, so that local authorities have a clear national mandate to act; to update the national design guide and national model design code to include substantive guidance on designing for women’s safety, drawing on the international best practice that already exists and is well evidenced; to require major developments to demonstrate how they contribute to SDGs 5.2 and 11.7—commitments the Government have already made on the world stage; and to introduce gender impact assessments for large-scale developments as a standard part of the planning process.”