19 Feb Women’s Night Safety Charter Summit 2026: why safer spaces must be built in, not bolted on
Planners, councils, businesses, transport bodies and safety experts will unite with the Women’s Night Safety Charter to discuss how spaces and places can be designed to make women safer.
The annual Women’s Night Safety Charter Summit, taking place on 26 February, reflects a growing shift in how we think about women’s safety. Too often, safety is treated as something to respond to after incidents occur. This year’s Summit asks a different question: what if safety was built in from the very start?
What makes this summit different
This year’s Summit focuses on Pledge 7 of the Charter – designing public spaces and workplaces to be safer for women.
The aim is that everyone leaves the room with something tangible they can apply, regardless of the size or sector of their organisation.
What makes this event different is its breadth of perspectives. The programme brings together:
• Researchers exploring how women experience parks, streets and green spaces
• Local authority and public realm specialists working on real environments
• Transport organisations sharing learning from safety audits and pilot schemes
• Training experts focused on conflict management and staff response
• Practitioners working with both victims and perpetrators of violence against women and girls
Among the speakers is Dr Anna Barker from Leeds Metropolitan University, who will be sharing learning from her work on the Environmental Vulnerability Evaluation (EVE) toolkit – a free, practical self-assessment tool that helps organisations identify where public and semi-public spaces may increase feelings of vulnerability, and where relatively small changes can make a meaningful difference. The event will be practical – with discussions about what actually works, what can realistically be changed, and how organisations can take responsibility within their own remit.
Why designing places with women in mind matters
London is a 24-hour city. Women move through it early in the morning, late at night, and everywhere in between, for work, care, leisure and travel. Yet many spaces still feel as though women’s safety was never considered at the design stage.
We know from years of engagement with signatories that small, practical decisions can make a significant difference: lighting, sightlines, layout, active frontages, how spaces are managed, and whether people feel confident to intervene when something doesn’t feel right.
A key focus of the day is implementation.
Through a mix of keynote talks, panel discussions and facilitated breakout sessions, attendees will explore how learning from research and lived experience can translate into action such as:
• Rethinking public or semi-public spaces around workplaces
• Improving collaboration between councils, businesses and transport providers
• Using practical assessment tools to identify risk and opportunity
• Building staff confidence through training and clear response pathways
The Summit is open to Women’s Night Safety Charter signatories and non-signatories alike, and attracts a deliberately mixed audience, including planners, designers, local authorities, BIDs, venue operators, transport organisations and frontline safety professionals.
Importantly, we actively encourage male allyship. Women’s safety cannot sit with women alone, and previous summits have shown the value of having men in the room, asking questions and taking responsibility alongside female colleagues.
What I hope the impact will be
For me, success is measured by what happens after the summit. I want people to leave thinking differently about the spaces they control or influence, and feeling more confident to make changes, challenge assumptions, and work collaboratively rather than in silos.
If the conversations that start in the room lead to safer design decisions, better training uptake, stronger partnerships or even one organisation rethinking how a space is used, then the Summit has done its job.
Women’s safety doesn’t belong to one sector and this Summit is about bringing those pieces together to move to meaningful action.
If you’re attending, I look forward to welcoming you in February.
To find out more click here.