When Poppy goes on a night out, it always ends the same way: with an app called Find My Friends.
“I and about five of my - mainly female - closest friends have it and we all check on it when the other gets home if we’ve been hanging out. Sometimes on dates, too; it just makes us feel safer,” the 25-year-old says. The app, which lets users track and monitor their close friends’ whereabouts, is a go-to for many women - and it’s easy to see why.
“We do a lot of travelling back from east London to south, which involves a lot of waiting around on street corners for buses, which can definitely be scary in the early hours.”
And no wonder: friends of mine have been followed home before, have tried to brush off men who are a little too interested in making conversation, have dodged starers on public transport and have been shoved around - in one instance, off the tube and onto the platform beyond.
"At uni, I had a man try to push me down an alley when I was on my way back from the gym," Poppy says. "It's so annoying, really really irks me, that I'll pay the same bus or tube fare as a bloke and he'll make it unsafe for me to be there: countless things, rubbing, staring, spreading."
It’s an experience many can relate to, including myself. “Message me when you get home!” friends will say, along with hugs goodbye; at 2am, my WhatsApp group chat lights up with messages confirming that they did, indeed, get home safely.
And though nothing, very luckily, has ever happened to us, the same is not true across London - or indeed, across the country.
Being a woman in the UK is dangerous. Between 2017 and 2023, incidents of violence against women and girls rose by 40 per cent, leading one police chief to call it a “national emergency.” In the same report, police estimated that every year, one in 12 women will fall victim to an instance of rape, domestic abuse, stalking or harassment.
That’s 2 million victims a year. No wonder it’s been branded an “epidemic”, and those are only the reported numbers.
Although Find My Friends is useful, it can only do so much. And in a world where distrust in the police is higher than ever before, new initiatives are now rising up - many of them created by women - to provide a service that stretches from reporting crimes to keeping somebody company on the walk home.
One of them is WalkSafe, a free-to-use app that shows users a map of the crimes that have taken place in a certain area, the better to allow them to choose a safer way home. Its founder Emma Kay set up the app as a passion project in the aftermath of Sarah Everard’s abduction and murder at the hands of police officer Wayne Couzens in 2021.
“I am someone who's had a lot of lived experience,” she says. “[I experienced] a lot when I was walking to and from school. From age 12, [there was] a lot of sexual harassment. There was a dodgy park we had to cut through and we had people masturbating in the bushes, we had people following us.”
These days, WalkSafe has branched out its offering, and also helps users of all genders identify ‘safe spaces’ in the area they’re out in.
These could be pubs where the Ask for Angela scheme is operating, bars whose staff have had active bystander training, or places that offer free phone charging capabilities in case you’ve run out of battery and need to call for help. The app even allows fellow app users to track their trusted friends’ whereabouts, and sends them an automatic alert if they don’t reach their intended destination on time.
Unsurprisingly, it’s taken off. When they launched, says Kay, “there was such a distrust around London with the police [and] women felt so unsafe that we saw probably half a million downloads in the first 10 days from when we first started. And we've had over a million now.”
One new bit of functionality she’s particularly keen to share is WalkSafe’s new crime reporting feature, that allows users to anonymously report crimes to the police, with whom WalkSafe are now collaborating, despite initial reluctance on the police’s side.
“They were like, ‘users need to come to us, first and foremost,’” Kay says, but their tune quickly changed; possibly due to the fact they recognised that women still weren’t coming forward to report crimes.
“I think there has been a lack of trust in certain areas where they’re currently in the headlines,” Kay says. “The tide is turning for them, but I think we’ve still got a long way to go.”
But it’s not just WalkSafe: other apps are springing up to fill the gap that the police seem to have left. There’s The Sorority, a French app which has now launched worldwide, which allows women to register their location in any place they feel unsafe, alerting fellow users to their cry for help.
There’s also Strut Safe, which operates in Edinburgh, London and a growing number of cities across the midlands; walking through Hackney, Strut Safe stickers litter the lampposts and bus stops in the area.
It operates as a telephone hotline: anybody, of any gender, can call it on the way back from a night out and be connected with one of the team’s trained volunteers, who will provide company on the walk home. Rho Chung, one of the initiative’s co-founders, says the team usually pick up “a dozen, or a couple dozen” calls on a night out: so far this year, they’ve picked up 500.
“No one's ever been attacked while on the phone with us, thankfully,” they say; though they’ve never had to escalate a call, their volunteers have all been trained in how to deal with extreme situations. Though operators will encourage people to call 999 of their own accord, they will do so on behalf of the caller as a last resort.
“We know that that's a possibility. People call us when the threat level is pretty low; if someone's just been catcalled or something's just happened. We've got some really really lovely feedback from people often shouting out specific volunteers that they've spoken to… all the way down to people saying that they believe Strut Safe saved their life.”
And for nights out, there’s the recently-launched Where You At. Created by 24-year-old Tamzin Lent, after a “horrible” experience at a club, the app works together with massive venues like London’s Drumsheds to create a map of the club’s floorplan.
With the help of a bit of technological wizardry, app users can then pinpoint exactly where their friends are within that space - something that, Lent says, she hopes will take some of the stress out of a night out, though the app is also planning on rolling out its service to festivals.
“The idea was very much, how can I build something that will help people to have a really great, fun night where they feel empowered to wander around… and go and have a dance and go to another room?” says Lent.
“[Where] you shouldn't have to stay constantly with your friends. You should be able to have a bit more freedom.”
And the sad truth is that we need initiatives like this more than ever. Both Strut Safe and WalkSafe have reported surges in use after high-profile cases like that of Sarah Everard.
“I desperately want to drive change, but it is hard and bittersweet,” Kay admits, when I ask her what she feels about the success of WalkSafe.
“I always say that the app shouldn't have to exist. We love that we are there to support and help, however when you see high profile cases like Sabina Nessa and Zara Aleena, we typically see a rise in downloads. I mean with Sabina Nessa, we had 5,000 in a weekend.
“The call to action is there, and it's really disheartening,” she says. “It just makes you feel really sad that we still feel so unsafe.”
One thing’s for sure: these apps aren’t going anywhere, and neither is the demand for a safe way to travel home at night. But at least people are taking action, and at least the police are taking notice.
“It’s really interesting now the landscape is totally evolving and changing and people are merging together to help,” Kay finishes. Here's hoping we see change soon.
For more information on Strut Safe, please click here
For more information on WalkSafe, please click here
