Government prioritisation of prevention

Immediately, the Government should take action to make it clearer that preventing sexually motivated offences against women in public is an essential part of tackling violence against women and girls. This should include the following:

a. The Government should ensure that this Report, the detail of the violence against women and girls strategy, and the prevention strategy at Recommendation 25 (and the evaluation of its success, if available) are before the Secretary of State to inform her view on how to update future versions of the Strategic Policing Requirement. This is so that the Secretary of State can use this information to assess the level of importance and prominence to give to the threat of violence against women and girls (compared with the other identified national threats); and specifically to the prioritisation of the prevention of sexual offences against women in public spaces.

b. The Government should commit to and pursue a positive ambition that generally these crimes are preventable, not inevitable, with a clear focus on prevention being key to meeting the target of halving violence against women and girls over ten years.

c. The Government should ensure that there is a clear focus on identifying, responding to and preventing sexually motivated crimes against women in public spaces in the job descriptions, training and guidance for the remodelled neighbourhood policing roles.

d. The Government has, previously, provided an initial response to Creating a Safer World - The Challenge of Regulating Online Pornography, the 2025 Independent Pornography Review conducted by Baroness Bertin. This included recognising the need to act urgently to tackle the harms from illegal and harmful pornography online, and the link between attitudes and behaviours in the online and offline world. The Government also recognised that this is crucial in order to deliver the mission to halve violence against women and girls in ten years. It is deeply worrying that harmful content that would be illegal offline remains unrestrained online. Therefore, the Government should provide a full response to each of the recommendations in the Review by February 2026, to enable cross-cutting prevention activity alongside the recommendations in this Report.