RITA PATEL’S MESSAGE IN FULL

I WOULD like to offer my condolences to Sarah Everard’s family and friends.

I would also like to offer my support to all those women who are fighting to feel safe.

I know it’s been harder to feel safe on much emptier streets during lockdown. Where the reassurance of crowds has gone and our streets no longer provide witnesses to unwanted comments or approaches.

I want every woman and girl in Leicester to feel safe, anywhere in this city.

Safe from violent attacks on OUR streets.

Safe from attacks in OUR homes. Safe in OUR everyday lives, from the daily drip-drip of disrespect and objectification.

In the UK every week, two women are murdered in their homes.

Creating an environment where violence against women is NOT A REFLEX of male anger, is incredibly important. We must work together to ensure this.

On a daily basis, women and girls endure uninvited comments and the invasion of our personal space in public spaces. This cannot go on any longer.

Together, we must create a community, a city, a world where the incessant humiliation and disrespect of women and girls is not allowed.

Not on our streets, in our workplaces, in any public spaces anywhere by anyone. Where there’s no blind eye turned.

As assistant city mayor for equalities, I know words are not enough. It will take real action to create the city we all want.

The understandable immediate response is to make our streets, parks and public spaces safer.

As you’d rightly expect, we work constantly and closely with our local police and the Labour police and crime commissioner to protect women and girls on our streets and in our homes.

Our Safer Leicester Partnership uses community insight and innovative design to tackle issues around street safety and we of course work similarly and tirelessly in partnership to offer refuge and support to victims of domestic violence.

On behalf of the city mayor and the executive I would like to reassure you that it goes beyond this reflex.

In everything we do – the services we provide, the city we design, the decisions we make – the safety of women and the respect of women is fundamental and central to how we both serve and lead our communities.

We know that offering support only goes so far. We welcome yesterday’s announcement in the House of Lords that the police will soon treat misogyny as a hate crime. It is a welcome first step.

However locally, we must be proactive in our anti-misogyny, pro-equality approach and I promise we will be, in every facet of our work. It’s not enough to simply speak up and offer support for women.

We will tackle head on the behaviours, the cultures and the structures which continue to produce such male violence and disrespect toward women.