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Appendix C - Year on Year Progress

Year on Year Progress

2025/26 Reflection

The Bexley Community Safety Partnership has been committed to tackling Violence against Women and Girls in line with our 2024 to 2028 VAWG Strategy.

We have developed public communications, tools and resources to raise awareness of VAWG and the different forms, and to ensure that the services and reporting mechanisms available are clear, utilised and that those reporting receive quality response.

As a result of this, here are our top VAWG partnership achievements across 2025/26:

  1. Training: Delivery of our VAWG training programme to 199 professionals and stakeholders, enhancing skills to identify abuse, respond appropriately, and challenge cultural norms around gender-based abuse.
  2. Campaigning and Visibility: We continued to roll out the borough’s VAWG campaign, including leaflets and posters, which are displayed around Bexley including in GPs, libraries and local businesses. As a partnership, we recognise the global 16 Days Campaign against Gender-Based Abuse (25 November – 10 December, annually) as a key opportunity to raise awareness of VAWG-related issues and support. To demonstrate some of the work that has been ongoing, the partnership ran a local campaign in 2025, including online communications; a partnership awareness stall in our main shopping centre providing advice, information and resources to residents and businesses; delivered several training sessions; an opening 16 days conference; a Domestic Abuse Champions event; a walk and talk with the Police and residents; and  a White Ribbon coffee morning to reflect on the progress made in the last year since the London Borough of Bexley became an accredited White Ribbon organisation. 
  3. Community Engagement:  17 community outreach and engagement events were held across the borough to raise awareness, signpost to local services, and gather resident insight through our borough-wide VAWG survey. 
  4. Partnership Working with the Police:  Collaboration with the Metropolitan Police to deliver walk and talks, including a VAWG specific personal safety walk and talk in Lesness Abbey Woods, as well as a VAWG Forum in Slade Green.
  5. Strategic Recognition:  Bexley achieved White Ribbon Accreditation in 2024, a public commitment to tackling male violence against women. In 2025 the number of Ambassadors and Champions grew to 19 Ambassadors and 28 Champions in the borough. We hosted our first White Ribbon Ambassador and Champion event and White Ribbon Misogyny and Allyship training.
  6. Inclusive Prevention Work: The HALO (Have A Life Outside) Project: a Violence Reduction Unit-funded prevention project for young people who are involved or at risk of serious violence. The four-day project had several cohorts that ran over 2025, delivered by the London Fire Brigade and partners. The project aimed to explore team building and community risk, with subjects covered such as;
  • VAWG workshops including bystander training
  • how gang violence impacts on the wider community
  • how to stay safe from criminal grooming/exploitation
  • knife crime awareness
  • stop and search know your rights
  • first aid workshops
  1. The DAY Programme: delivered by Bexley Solace, DAY is a 10-week programme, delivered for one hour per week. It launched in April 2025, with the aim to help young people learn about healthy relationships, respect and safety in an engaging and relatable way.  By using short films, advertisements and chart music, DAY makes these essential topics accessible and easy to connect with. The facilitators worked with several cohorts of young people across Bexley in 2025.
  2. The Directory of Programmes for Schools: a directory of VAWG-related programmes and support available to schools was developed in 2025, in collaboration with Public Health and Community Safety. The purpose of the directory is to increase confidence among education colleagues in signposting identified survivors to appropriate services, as well as to improve awareness and access to existing programmes that promote healthy relationships and VAWG prevention for children and young people. A launch event was held as part of the 16 Days of Action campaign in December 2025, where all schools and colleges across Bexley were invited to hear from organisations delivering these programmes, including Ascent, VoiceBox, Solace and GALOP.
  3. College Engagement Events: this included collaborative work with the Police to attend local college fresher days and student events, where we promoted personal safety and supported awareness campaigns including Stalking Awareness and Spiking Awareness Week.
  4. Specialist Training: in 2025 we commissioned Rape Crisis South London to deliver a half day workshop to professionals in Bexley on image-based sexual abuse and how to safeguard around this. The training aimed to increase practitioners’ understanding of the forms and impact of image-based abuse, including the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, digitally facilitated abuse, coercion, and online exploitation. The workshop provided frontline professionals with greater awareness of the risks faced by victims, the barriers to disclosure, and the safeguarding actions available to support those affected.

These achievements reflect our collective effort to raise awareness, build capacity, and embed a whole-system response to ending violence against women and girls.

Areas of Focus for 2026/27

Looking ahead to 2026/27, our work will continue to be rooted in a victim‑centred, trauma‑informed and inclusive approach, with a renewed emphasis on early intervention, tackling misogyny, and improving outcomes for marginalised and underrepresented communities. We will continue to adapt and refine our approach based on evidence, resident insight and national learning. Over the next year, our priorities will be to strengthen borough‑wide awareness, access to support, prevention through data, partnership work and education. 

We will:

  1. Raise Awareness:  strengthen borough‑wide awareness through an annual programme aligned with the national Enough campaign and the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (IDEVAWG), supported by the BCSP Communications Plan, inclusive resources, and consistent social media activity. We will expand our work with schools and colleges, prioritising early‑prevention sessions on healthy relationships, consent, online safety and challenging misogynistic attitudes among young people. Public‑facing outreach and partner engagement will remain central to our approach.
  2. Improve Communication and Accessibility: review and enhance all VAWG communications to ensure they are inclusive, accessible and available across multiple formats. Partner websites will be updated to provide clear information and referral pathways, and the borough‑wide VAWG Support Directory will continue to be promoted amongst professionals to improve navigation of services.
  3. Data, Insight, and Evidence: promote and analyse data through tools like StreetSafe, Walk and Talks, and crime reporting.  We will continue our annual resident survey and gather qualitative insight from communities and service users to inform local needs assessments and shape targeted interventions.
  4. Training and Capacity Building: deliver an enhanced VAWG training package for professionals focused on legal frameworks, trauma-informed support, and partnership working. We will promote external training opportunities and grow our network of White Ribbon and Domestic Abuse Champions and Ambassadors to support culture change across the borough.
  5. Safer Communities and Victim Support: utilise any available funding and resource strategically to improve safety infrastructure, support core VAWG staffing, and enhance community-based victim services. We ensure that all signposting is up to date and messaging around how to make referrals is clear. 
  6. Perpetrator-Focused Work:  increase awareness of healthy behaviours through the Enough campaign. We will continue to seek funding or resourcing to develop early‑intervention and behaviour‑change programmes for perpetrators. We will explore opportunities for community and school‑based engagement , including with men and boys, focusing on challenging harmful attitudes and preventing future harm.
  7. Partnership and Strategy Development: update and expand the VAWG Working Group to reflect wider partnership input, with quarterly Action Plan reviews and oversight from BCSP and MOPAC, to ensure accountability, shared learning and coordinated delivery across the borough.