GovWire

This report presents the findings from an independent evaluation of the Safety of Women at Night (SWaN) Fund. The fund consisted of 5 million to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG) in public spaces at night, including within the night-time economy.

The evaluation included a process and impact evaluation. The process evaluation aimed to understand the key facilitators and challenges for bid teams at each stage of the SWaN programme, and to identify good practice emerging from SWaN. The impact evaluation aimed to identify the impact that SWaN interventions had on improving feelings of safety in public spaces at night.

The process evaluation found that stakeholders reported how SWaN provided an opportunity to fill gaps in existing provision to address VAWG, and that the eligibility criteria allowed new organisations to bid and to trial new interventions. Overall, the evaluation found no statistically significant evidence that SWaN interventions had an impact on the feelings of safety in public spaces at night, though there was some positive evidence at an individual level. The evaluation also found evidence of some positive effects in relation to the impact on nighttime economy workers, as a result of SWaN interventions. The qualitative research highlighted that one of the reasons for a lack of impact may be the many complex factors that influence perceptions of safety, including prior experiences of crime and awareness of local or national crime incidents, in addition to the limitations of the research design.