“There needs to be a radical change in how we design and think about public spaces and public transport with funding to match,” North East Mayor Kim McGuinness said as ministers set out new plans to help councils make streets safer for women and girls. Active Travel England announced on Wednesday 25 March 2026 that it will run training for councils this spring and publish detailed guidance later in 2026, backing the government’s ambition to halve violence against women and girls within a decade.

New YouGov polling released the same day finds almost 9 in 10 women (88%) have felt unsafe walking at night, while 7 in 10 (71%) have changed their route to avoid darker streets in winter. One in three young women are put off walking locally altogether. Respondents cited poor lighting, neglected paths, personal safety fears and antisocial behaviour as the main reasons - and said they would feel safer if councils tackled these basics.

In Liverpool on Tuesday 24 March 2026, Local Transport Minister Lilian Greenwood walked several city‑centre streets with women and girls to hear first‑hand what would help. “No one should worry about getting to their destination safely after dark,” she said. “This programme is turning conversations into real change by working directly with the councils who design our streets to ensure women and girls in our communities feel safe to walk, wheel and cycle whenever they want to.”

Active Travel England’s guidance will ask councils to look at street design through a gender lens. That means better lighting and clear sightlines, routing walking paths along busier, overlooked roads, installing CCTV where appropriate, and avoiding dead‑ends and blind corners. Training sessions due this spring will focus on practical fixes and how to build schemes around lived experience.

Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls Jess Phillips called the situation a national emergency. “Violence against women and girls is a national emergency, and this government will halve it in a decade,” she said. “I welcome this work to design streets that make women feel safer, shifting responsibility away from women and onto the spaces and behaviours that put them at risk.”

National Active Travel Commissioner Chris Boardman said the polling should shame decision‑makers. “That almost 9 out of 10 women say they feel unsafe walking after dark is an appalling finding we should be ashamed of,” he said, urging visible changes - from surface crossings instead of underpasses to better lighting and CCTV - and, crucially, listening to local women about what works.

Several councils outside London are already showing what targeted investment can do. Nottinghamshire County Council’s Safer Streets scheme in Worksop delivered 27 new CCTV cameras where women reported feeling unsafe, upgraded 200 streetlights in key hotspots, and trained taxi drivers to challenge misogynistic behaviour.

In Liverpool, Merseyside Police has rolled out “Halo Points” across the city centre - well‑lit, highly visible locations connected directly to emergency services and CCTV - to give people somewhere obvious to head for if they feel threatened after dark.

In the North East, McGuinness has committed £7.1 million for new and upgraded bus shelters and stops, including better seating, clearer timetable information and new lighting at more than 170 locations. “Women should not have to plan their journeys around fear and spaces they need to avoid,” she said. “Safety must be built into how our streets and transport networks are designed.”

Elsewhere, Leicester has filled in the underpass at Strasbourg Drive and replaced it with a street‑level crossing to improve safety for people heading to schools and workplaces. In Greater Manchester, the large underpass on the Mancunian Way was removed and replaced with surface pedestrian crossings in 2020 - a move widely welcomed by those who use the route daily.

Active Travel England will also point councils to international ideas that have worked. In Amsterdam, officials assess locations at dusk and after dark to understand how places actually feel at night. In Vigo, Spain, night‑time “request stops” let women ask bus drivers to set them down closer to home, cutting the distance they have to walk alone.

The Department for Transport says its Violence Against Women and Girls strategy includes stronger CCTV connectivity at stations, mandatory training for bus drivers to spot and respond to harassment, and a new VAWG package for roads policing. Councils will be able to draw on Active Travel England’s £626 million fund to pay for changes that make walking and wheeling feel safe. For Northern leaders, the message is simple: use the money, work with women locally, and get the basics right this spring as training begins, with formal guidance to follow later in 2026.