Public Sexual Harassment Public Spaces Protection Order

Redbridge Council and the local Community Safety Partnership have undertaken extensive engagement with local people to find out about their crime and safety concerns and identify together how we can make everyone who lives, works, studies in, or visits Redbridge feel safer in our public spaces. During this engagement, women’s safety has been consistently identified by Redbridge residents as a priority for the local Community Safety Partnership.

Local people have told us that they care deeply about this issue. Our community is still struggling with the shock, fear, and outrage from the violent murders of local residents Maria Rawlings and Zara Aleena, who were killed in separate incidents whilst walking home. Improving the ability of everyone to feel safe on our streets is a top priority.

The Council’s Women’s Safety mission statement outlines our ambition to promote the safety of people in Redbridge on our streets:

“We all deserve to feel safe, wherever we live, and it is unacceptable that many women in our borough and across the world have experienced harassment, abuse and in some cases violence on the basis of their sex or gender.

Our engagement with local women and girls has shone a light on how commonplace sexual harassment as part of their everyday experiences is in public spaces, and sexual harassment has become alarmingly normalised. This has to stop.”

In line with this, the Council are consulting with the public on the proposal to introduce a new Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) to allow Council and Police officers to enforce against sexualised behaviour that may harass, alarm or distress people on our streets in Redbridge.

Residents have consistently told us that public sexual harassment occurs across the whole borough. Therefore, the intention would be for any PSPO to be effective across the whole of Redbridge.

Public sexual harassment involves unwelcome and unwanted behaviour directed at a person in a public space. Examples of such behaviour include intrusive or persistent staring or questioning, following someone, sexual or obscene comments, propositions, or gestures.

The PSPO enables Police and Council officers to fine (£100) individuals they believe are perpetrating public sexual harassment, which will have an immediate impact on the perpetrator whilst promoting changes in behaviour.

Public sexual harassment is anti-social behaviour. The overall aim of the PSPO is to reduce incidences of antisocial behaviour related to public sexual harassment and improve feelings of safety for all people in Redbridge.

The Proposed Order

The Order will last for a period of three years unless revoked by the Council. In order to introduce a PSPO it is necessary to undertake a period of public consultation to ensure residents are supportive of such action. Please use the public consultation form below to provide your views.

It is proposed that the new PSPO would involve the following components:

(i) Person(s), either on foot or in a vehicle, are prohibited from:

(a) Engaging in unwelcome and unwanted behaviours amounting to sexual harassment directed towards another person in a public place. This will include, but is not limited to, intrusive or persistent staring or questioning, following someone, sexual or obscene comments, propositions, or gestures.

(b) Engaging in shouting, swearing at, or abusing, threatening, or intimidating another person using sexual language or making sexual suggestions.