Women’s Safety in Rural Areas

Tuesday 24th March 2026 Westminster Hall

16:39

[Anna Sabine (Frome and East Somerset) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of planning on women’s safety in rural areas.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I secured this debate because I think the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has made an oversight; I hope it is a genuine oversight and that MHCLG is willing to rectify it. I am genuinely delighted that the Minister for Housing and Planning is here to respond, as I have been trying to contact him about this issue for some time, with no reply from his Department. I am confident that when he hears about the issues at first hand, he will be keen to act.

I want to start by paying tribute to my constituent Holly, who was the catalyst for this whole discussion. Holly lives in a village in my constituency and was flashed not once but three times by the same man while out walking in the countryside. When Holly came to see me, it was in a spirit of outrage that this had happened to her, and with a determination that we should do something about it.

UN Women UK has found that 71% of women have experienced sexual harassment in public spaces. Most of them never report it—not because it did not happen but because they believe nothing will be done. That alone should give us pause.

When the House has debates about women’s safety and place, we often talk about the same issues—quite rightly—that women face when they are out and about. Do they take the longer, well-lit route? Do they run before dawn, or wait until it is light? Do they walk home, or pay for a taxi they cannot afford? Do they have a phone signal if something goes wrong?

[Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)]

Will my hon. Friend join me in celebrating the work that Sergeant Roseanna Green does to address the challenges presented when planning overlooks women’s safety? Her Walk and Talk intervention pilot in Somerset allows women who are over 18 to go on a walk with a female police officer to highlight local areas where they feel unsafe, including by identifying areas for CCTV, lighting improvement and increased police patrols.

[Anna Sabine]

That sounds like an excellent scheme. We have a similar one in Frome that I commend to the House.

In rural areas, most of the questions I just asked do not even apply. There may not be street lighting, there are no taxis and, as in swathes of my constituency, there is no mobile phone signal.

[Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)]

My hon. Friend talks about appropriate lighting. I am a keen cyclist, as are lots of women in rural areas, and 59% of women who cycle say they are really worried about their journeys and have huge safety concerns as a result. Last October, Langport cycling club took part in a glow ride to raise awareness of the need for enhanced levels of safety and visibility for women, particularly when they are cycling at night. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government must update the design guidance to include stronger standards for appropriate lighting in rural areas, to improve women’s safety?

[Anna Sabine]

Certainly. That sounds excellent and I will come to lots of nerdy points about design guidance in due course.

My constituency of Frome and East Somerset is, by any measure, a beautiful part of England. It is also a place where the challenges I am describing are felt with particular intensity. Inspired by Holly, last autumn I launched a survey to hear directly from women in my constituency about how safe they feel. Their responses were sobering. Women wrote about being followed on dark country lanes that had no street lighting; about waiting for buses on isolated roads with no shelter, no CCTV and no way of summoning help; about giving up running and cycling all together, not because they lacked the inclination but because they simply did not feel safe doing so; and about the constant, exhausting vigilance required just to get home.

Coincidentally, earlier this year I was contacted separately by a brilliant urban designer called Natasha, who drew my attention to the fact that the Government have set out an excellent strategy to combat violence against women and girls, and a national planning policy framework, but at the moment the two things make no reference to each other, which is a shocking oversight.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for securing the debate. In rural constituencies such as mine and the hon. Lady’s, large stretches of unlit roads, pathways and open land, often bordered by dark fields, can create a real sense of vulnerability. Does the hon. Lady agree that future developments or planning proposals in such areas must take into account safe, well-lit corridors, especially when it comes to transport links, to ensure that women feel safe commuting to where they need to be in areas that are historically dark and isolated?

[Anna Sabine]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Member. I will talk about lighting in due course.

In her book “Invisible Women”, Caroline Criado-Perez documents how the built environment has historically been designed around a default that is male, and how data on street use, transport planning and public space has been gathered without disaggregating by sex. The result is infrastructure that works reasonably well for men and imposes a hidden cost of time, money, anxiety and constrained freedom on women. That cost is not inevitable. It is a design choice, and it can be designed out.

Women are four times more likely to experience sexual assault than men, and more than twice as likely to experience stalking. Many such offences happen not in the home but in public spaces—on paths, at bus stops, in car parks and on the routes between places. They happen disproportionately in spaces that are poorly lit, poorly overlooked and poorly served by transport.

The consequences extend far beyond the incidents themselves. Girls’ loss of freedom in public space is directly and measurably linked to poor mental health. Women who feel unsafe curtail their physical activity, social lives and working patterns. Violence against women and girls costs hundreds of lives a year, alongside widespread and serious harm that ripples outwards into health services, the economy and the fabric of communities.

To circle back to my opening point, we know what works, but the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government seems determined not to implement it. On 16 December 2025, the Government published the revised national planning policy framework, and just two days later they published their violence against women and girls strategy, rightly declaring VAWG a national emergency and committing to a whole-of-society approach to prevention. Those two documents should have been in conversation with each other, but they were not.

The revised NPPF contains no reference whatsoever to women, girls, gendered safety or violence against women in the built environment—not one. Chapter 8, on promoting healthy and safe communities, discusses safety, health and crime, but does so in entirely gender-blind terms, despite overwhelming evidence that safety is not experienced equally by all people in all spaces. A chapter about healthy and safe communities which does not acknowledge that safety is not experienced equally is not, with respect, a chapter about healthy and safe communities. It is a chapter about healthy and safe communities for some people.

In January I wrote to both the Minister for Housing and Planning and the Minister for Safeguarding to raise the issue directly. I have yet to receive a substantive response from either of them, but when The Guardian asked MHCLG for comment, the response received was frankly jaw-dropping. MHCLG said:

“The NPPF is a planning document. It sets out guidelines for housebuilding and planning in England. The VAWG strategy is about protecting women and girls from violence and misogyny.”

The Department said it was

“unclear as to why anyone would expect the two things to be combined”.

That tells us that, alarmingly, the people responsible for designing our spaces and places apparently do not understand, despite huge bodies of evidence, why planning with women in mind might be relevant or useful. That raises serious concerns not just about the policy position but about the Department’s basic understanding of the relationship between planning and women’s lives.

What makes that omission particularly hard to defend is that it was not an accident. The previous Government explicitly raised this issue in the 2022 NPPF consultation, asking whether greater emphasis should be placed on making women and girls feel safe in public places. Responses were received, but nothing changed in the December 2025 revision, under the current Government. I want to be precise about that means: MHCLG was asked whether it should do better on this issue, received evidence it should and chose not to act. That is not an oversight; it is a decision.

International best practice in gender-responsive planning is really well established: clear sight lines and natural surveillance; active street frontages that keep eyes on the street; thoughtful lighting design—not simply more but better lights, placed in the right locations; and safe, well-connected public transport routes that do not leave women stranded after dark.

Make Space for Girls, the UK campaign that has done forensic and compelling work on how public space is designed for teenagers, has shown that the spaces we build for young people—the parks, play areas and recreational spaces—are overwhelmingly designed with boys in mind. The default is a multi-use games area: a hard, caged, male-dominated space that girls report, in study after study, feeling excluded from and unsafe in. Girls do not lack interest in outdoor space; they lack outdoor spaces that were designed with them in mind. The consequence is that girls retreat indoors earlier, exercise less and lose the freedom of movement that is so fundamental to adolescent development and mental health. This is not a minor amenity issue; it is a public health issue—and it starts with planning.

The principles are well established, but without explicit inclusion in national policy, they remain optional. As a result, women’s safety in public space is a postcode lottery—and nowhere is that lottery more consequential than in rural areas where the baseline is already so much lower.

The omission also creates a tension with the Government’s international commitments. UK infrastructure policy is explicitly aligned with the UN’s sustainable development goals, including SDG 5.2, on eliminating violence against women and girls, and SDG 11.7, on safe and inclusive public spaces explicitly for women and girls. The NPPF discusses the safety and design quality of green space at length, but does not mention either of those commitments.

A further tension is emerging that I do not think has received sufficient attention—the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) alluded to it. Nature recovery and biodiversity policies are rightly being pursued with increasing ambition, with green corridors, rewilded verges and, in some cases, reduced lighting to support wildlife. Those are good objectives, but in some instances they are pursued without adequate consideration of what they mean for women’s safety. A dark, overgrown footpath may be an excellent habitat, but it may also be a route that women no longer feel able to use. We should not have to choose between environmental policy and women’s safety. Without gender-responsive planning guidance, that tension will not be managed; it will simply produce worse outcomes by default. The NPPF is not a neutral document; it is a statement of priorities, and right now it does not include women’s safety among them.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is making a passionate speech about how we build in this country and the considerations we need to make. In my constituency, we have a large-scale development called Minerva Heights that was planned to be built in phases. Lighting down St Paul’s Road, which connects phase 1 to other centralised communities, was meant to be delivered before phase 2 was built out, but phase 2 is not yet coming because phase 1 homes cannot be sold. I have been contacted by many constituents who feel trapped in their community and unable to engage in other areas because they have no way of moving around the building that has already been done. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is why we need an infrastructure-first approach that comes with lighting delivered before the homes are built?

[Anna Sabine]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. We need an infrastructure-first approach that also has women and girls’ safety in mind.

I hope with all sincerity that the MHCLG’s official view is not the one that was set out by whoever gave that comment to The Guardian. I hope the Labour Government aspire not just to match but to exceed the standards of the previous Government when it comes to the safety and wellbeing of women. I also hope the Minister will commit today to taking steps towards putting VAWG at the heart of the NPPF. That would have a genuinely transformative effect on women’s lives in the UK.

Along with a series of experts in urban design and planning, I am calling on the Government to commission an independent review—a serious, systematic review of violence against women and girls and the built environment. It must be a review with teeth that establishes an authoritative evidence base, that examines the structural gaps between the VAWG strategy and planning policy, and that produces recommendations that require developers and planners to treat women’s safety as a fundamental component of design, not an optional extra. I am sure the Minister will be pleased that all this is included in a second letter that I will send to him today.

Alongside that, I urge the Government to take the following specific steps without delay: to amend the NPPF to explicitly require the consideration of women and girls’ safety, particularly in chapters 8 and 12, so that local authorities have a clear national mandate to act; to update the national design guide and national model design code to include substantive guidance on designing for women’s safety, drawing on the international best practice that already exists and is well evidenced; to require major developments to demonstrate how they contribute to SDGs 5.2 and 11.7—commitments the Government have already made on the world stage; and to introduce gender impact assessments for large-scale developments as a standard part of the planning process.

I also urge the Government to look seriously at gender budgeting as a tool for local authorities when they design streets, parks and public spaces. Gender budgeting does not mean ringfencing money for women; it means asking at the point of allocation, “Who benefits from this spending? Is the distribution equitable?” Vienna, Helsinki and Seoul have all used gender budgeting in the design of public space to reveal and correct the systemic underfunding of spaces that women and girls actually use. It is a practical, evidence-based mechanism, and it is entirely compatible with the fiscal constraints that local authorities are operating under. We should be using it here.

Finally, I hope the Minister will ensure that MHCLG is formally integrated into cross-Government delivery of the VAWG strategy. A whole-of-society approach that excludes the Department responsible for shaping the physical environment is not, in any meaningful sense, a whole-of-society approach—it is a strategy with a very large hole in it. The Government’s ambition to halve violence against women and girls within a decade is genuinely welcome, but ambition without structural delivery mechanisms will not achieve it. Right now, the NPPF—the primary lever for shaping how this country is built—contains nothing that would materially help to deliver it. That gap must be addressed if the strategy is to be credible.

The women who responded to my survey in Frome and East Somerset were not asking for the extraordinary. They were not asking for anything that other countries have not already delivered. They were asking to walk home safely, to go for a run, to catch a bus without calculating the risk, and to move through their own communities with the same unconsidered freedom that most men take entirely for granted. This is not a radical demand; it is a basic one, and the tools to deliver it in planning policy, design guidance and cross-Government strategy are well within our grasp. I urge the Minister to act. The evidence is there, the need is clear, and the gap in policy is glaring and, as I have shown today, entirely without justification. Let us work together to close it.

16:55

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Dowd. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine) on securing this debate and making a powerful, well evidenced and entirely reasonable case for women and girls’ interests to be taken better into account in planning.

The violence against women and girls strategy, published in December 2025, describes planning and design as “critical tools” in women’s safety. Part 2 of the Angiolini inquiry, commissioned after the murder of Sarah Everard, called for women’s safety to be embedded into the planning of public spaces, yet the updated national planning policy framework, published by the same Government in the same month, does not mention women or girls once—not in chapter 8 on safe communities, nor anywhere else.

My hon. Friend the Member for Frome and East Somerset and I wrote to the Minister for Housing and Planning and the Safeguarding Minister about that omission. When the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government was asked, a spokesperson told The Guardian it was “unclear” why the two issues should be combined in any way. If the Government do not understand how women’s safety ties in with planning new spaces, we have a very serious problem.

The previous Conservative Government at least acknowledged that link when they consulted in 2022 on whether the NPPF should do more to keep women and girls safe. They did nothing about it, but they asked the question, which got it on the agenda. The Government appear to have one Department denying that a connection exists, while another Department explicitly acknowledges planning as a critical tool. That is unfortunately a case in point in the Government’s wider approach to communities and consultation. Rather than trusting local people to shape the places they live in, the direction of travel, whether by accident or by design—I look forward to the Minister telling me that this is not the direction of travel—seems to be towards centralisation and away from community voices.

There are several examples of that. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill will see the Secretary of State removing decisions from local councillors on planning applications, in a move that I believe infantilises local councillors. A new direction, confirmed by the Ministry’s document published only yesterday, will prevent councillors from deciding on significant applications unless they first ask for the Minister’s permission. The Government have withdrawn funding for neighbourhood planning support services, the very mechanism through which communities can influence the design of their built environment.

The Government have also stripped much of the community and consultation policy out of the new draft national planning policy framework. The word “community” has been deleted no fewer than 35 times and the word “consultation” has been deleted 10 times. Without funding, most town and parish councils simply cannot review or update their plans. If gendered safety is not in the NPPF, overstretched local authorities cannot address it, because they are too underfunded to do anything that is not mandatory. These omissions from the NPPF do not only fail women at the national level; they give others licence to ignore the issue entirely.

In my constituency of Taunton and Wellington, parishioners in Kingston St Mary have raised with me the lack of pedestrian routes into Taunton. Walking along a narrow country road with no pavements is the only option, and women in the village find it unsafe. Cyclists too are affected. The parish council passed on one comment to me from a resident who said that cycling into Taunton should be easy, not life-threatening, on the Kingston Road. It is too dangerous to commute on a bike. The parish council also asked me particularly, unprompted by me, to raise the removal of funding for neighbourhood plans by this Government.

Walking along roads without footpaths is unsafe for everyone, but for women, especially after dark, it is not merely inconvenient; it restricts their freedom. Women in our communities deserve to enjoy the same confidence moving around our cities, towns and villages as anyone else. The local planning policy could and should be the mechanism to deliver that, consulting local communities to understand the priorities that need to be addressed. But communities need the policy backing and the tools and resources to make it happen, and the Government seem to be taking those away.

There are of course trade-offs that arise from design choices. Street lighting improves safety but contributes to light pollution. Green corridors are ecologically valuable but can create spaces that feel unsafe. Dense planting improves biodiversity but can reduce sight lines. Those are all trade-offs, but central Government overreach is not the answer. Local decision making informed by community nous is the answer. That would give women and others a say in the outcomes that matter in their local environments. Those are precisely what community-led planning is for.

Liberal Democrats call on the Government to amend the NPPF to explicitly require consideration for women’s and girls’ safety, particularly in chapter 8; to update the national design guide and national model design code to include clear guidance on designing for women’s safety; and to restore funding for neighbourhood plans so that communities have the means to implement the solutions that work best for them.

Community involvement matters, and planning has everything to do with women’s safety, whatever the quotes in The Guardian said. I hope the Minister will explain how community voices, particularly those of women, will be heard in planning.

17:00

[Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd, and to take part in this debate about the impact of planning on women’s safety in rural areas. Any concern about the safety of women and girls in their local communities is, of course, of real importance, and I welcome the opportunity to examine the issue from the context of the planning system. I congratulate the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine) on securing the debate. Let me start by setting out why this debate is important, because the safety of women and girls should be a whole Government effort and of concern to the whole of society. It is relevant to consider the context at the outset.

In July 2024, the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing described the problem of violence against women and girls as a national emergency, making up just under 20% of all recorded crime in England and Wales. Data has shown that in rural areas, convictions for domestic abuse are less likely, and victims in rural areas are subject to domestic abuse for 25% longer than those in urban areas, and are half as likely to report it.

It is clear that a strong disparity exists between the safety of women in urban locations and those in rural locations—I appreciate the value of this aspect of today’s debate. I have no doubt that the Government share the police chiefs’ concern. Despite that, the Government’s “Freedom from violence and abuse: a cross-government strategy” mentions rural locations just once. I suspect that is unintentional, but would welcome confirmation from the Minister in a few moments.

When we think about safety, we often focus on laws, policing or personal responsibility. That is entirely understandable, but one of the most powerful tools we have is something perhaps less obvious and the subject of this debate: planning. The way we design and organise rural spaces, roads, transport systems, lighting, housing and community services can significantly shape how safe women and girls feel and actually are. It is important that women and girls feel safe in the built environment around them, and that choices are made to ensure that safety can be upheld. That is why it is noteworthy that the Government have said:

“Design and planning are critical tools in achieving this.”

The planning system may at first seem a somewhat unrelated aspect of Government policy in the context of women’s safety, but as the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset emphasised in her speech, that assumption is wide of the mark. Through the planning system, both central and local Government can shape the built environment around women and girls to provide the infrastructure necessary to make rural streets, hamlets, villages and towns safe places for local people in general, and local women and girls in particular. For example, we know that well-lit streets, accessible transport and thoughtful design can work towards reducing violence and opportunities for harm.

Those examples do not guarantee women’s and girls’ safety. It is of considerable regret that so many women and girls do not feel safe on our streets, despite efforts made locally and centrally by figures of authority. But the changes that such planning choices can lead to in making women and girls feel safer in rural communities are none the less of great importance. That is clearly why the Government have announced that they will

“update national design guidance to reflect a VAWG perspective, ensuring that safety considerations inform how public spaces are designed.”

I hope the Minister will update us in a few minutes’ time on the progress regarding that pledge. What specific changes will be made and when?

In addition, the Minister’s colleagues in the Department for Transport launched a consultation regarding the third cycling and walking investment strategy recently. In that consultation, the Minister’s colleagues noted:

“Investment in well-lit, safe, high-quality walking, wheeling and cycling routes increases feelings of personal safety, as well as improving road safety”.

The Government are yet to release their response to the consultation, which closed in November 2025. I hope the Minister will confirm that he will investigate how that pledge can be enacted, and what impact it will have on rural areas and the women and girls who live within them.

On rural issues specifically, I have already spoken about better lighting and creating safer spaces, but rural areas face a multitude of other issues that can actively work against the protection of women and girls. Technology and communication infrastructure are key parts of modern planning. Access to mobile networks and emergency services can literally be lifesaving in rural areas, but, according to a report from the House of Lords, although the situation is improving, rural areas often suffer from much worse access to the internet and worse phone coverage than urban areas.

In January 2024, the proportion of rural premises with access to gigabit-capable broadband was only 47%, compared with 84% of premises in urban areas. Around 5% of premises in rural areas were not able to access a decent broadband service at all, compared with just 1% in urban areas. Access to efficient broadband and speedy ways to contact key agencies in emergencies, including the police, would intuitively seem to be an important part of increasing the safety of women and girls in rural areas.

The lack of public transport in rural areas can force women and girls to take longer, less safe routes home. Given that, as I already mentioned, rural areas tend to be less well-lit and are often less heavily populated, the increased risk to women and girls caused by the lack of public transport is obvious.

In the planning system as a whole, there is a difficult balance between more effective regulation and making the system not just work for everyone, but actively support everyone in all aspects of life. It is clear that it will require a whole-Government approach to get that right. Planning alone is not a complete solution; it must work, as the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset said, alongside other agencies, such as education, community engagement and strong legal protections. Without good planning, even the best policies can fall short if they attempt to work in isolation.

The safety of women and girls must be improved and protected with a holistic and multi-departmental approach. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments.

17:07

[The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Dowd. I congratulate the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine) on securing this debate, and I thank the other hon. Members who have participated this afternoon for their contributions. On the subject of the hon. Lady’s letter, prior to this debate my office did look into what has happened. I think that, because it was addressed to both me and a Minister in the Home Office, it has been lost. However, I can assure her that she will receive a detailed response in fairly short order.

I will begin by reaffirming that tackling violence against women and girls is a top priority for the Labour Government, and our mission to halve it within a decade is already under way. As hon. Members have referenced, in December we published “Freedom from violence and abuse”, which is a transformative cross-Government strategy to accomplish that mission.

The strategy sets out the Government’s vision and the proposed concrete actions to prevent violence and abuse, pursue perpetrators and support victims. As the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon), said, it recognises that we must take a whole-of-society approach to tackling violence against women and girls. It recognises that we must work across Government, public services and wider society to achieve meaningful and lasting change.

An example of the cross-Government work that is taking place to build a safer society for women and girls is the ongoing work of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on women’s safety in rural areas. Last year, it sought evidence from rural areas on support services and delivery methods that work best in rural contexts. DEFRA is working across Government to understand the findings of that evidence and to inform future work. That will address the disparities in the provision of support so that every victim, whether they are in a city or a rural village, can access the help that they need.

There are examples across other Government Departments. For example, the Home Office is working with the Department for Transport to ensure that considerations of violence against women and girls are embedded into planning and transport guidance so that public places are welcoming and secure for women. On the shadow Minister’s point, I am more than happy to ask DFT colleagues to provide an answer as to when we can expect a response to the consultation that he referenced.

Turning to matters for which I am responsible as the Minister for Housing and Planning, my Department is clear that women and girls must feel safe and be safe in all environments, including shared and open spaces such as streets, parks, transport hubs and public buildings. Planning and urban design are critical tools to that end for enhancing women’s safety. While the VAWG strategy should not be combined with the national planning policy framework, it is relevant to it and has informed the drafting of it. In chapter 12 of the framework, concerning well-designed places, the existing NPPF sets out that the planning system should

“create places that are safe, inclusive and accessible and which promote health and well-being, with a high standard of amenity for existing and future users…and where crime and disorder, and the fear of crime, do not undermine the quality of life or community cohesion and resilience.”

As hon. Members are aware, the Government recently consulted on a new NPPF. The proposals in it are intended to reinforce the message that developments should create places that are safe and inclusive, including for women and girls. I draw the attention of hon. Members to a number of specific policies in the draft framework that are relevant to design, transport and public safety. Our proposed policy on the key principles for well-designed places sets out that, in relation to public spaces, development proposals should:

“Include spaces that are safe, secure, inclusive, accessible for all ages and abilities and which facilitate and encourage social interaction, play and healthy lifestyles”.

Our proposed policy on street design, access and parking sets out that development proposals should:

“Make sure that the arrangement of streets and other routes help to create places that are safe, inclusive and attractive for all users”.

There is also a specific policy in the draft framework on maintaining public safety and security, which sets out:

“Development proposals should anticipate and address possible malicious threats and other hazards…in relation to…Occupiers and users, by identifying potential safety risks and proportionate mitigation opportunities which can be addressed through the design of the scheme. This applies especially in relation to…addressing crime, or the fear of crime”.

I have noted the calls from a range of individuals and organisations, including the hon. Members for Frome and East Somerset and for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos), to ensure that the framework more explicitly recognises the importance of a focus on the needs of women and girls and their safety when considering development proposals, whether that be in a rural or urban context; calls that the framework explicitly reference the VAWG strategy; and some of the other requests that have been made today. As hon. Members are aware, the consultation on a new NPPF closed on 10 March. My officials and I are considering all the feedback received, including in relation to this issue, and I will treat the arguments made today as an informal extension of that process. We will publish an updated NPPF in due course.

As hon. Members are hopefully aware, the NPPF is supported by a range of planning practice guidance. That is really important because the purpose of PPG is to support the implementation of national planning policy. The VAWG action plan contained within the strategy published in December included, as has been referenced, a specific commitment for the Government to update national design guidance to reflect a violence against women and girls perspective, ensuring that safety considerations inform how public spaces are designed.

In January 2026, we published updated design and placemaking PPG in draft. That consolidated document is intended to replace existing design guidance, including the national design guide and national model design code. Hon. Members will, I trust, welcome that the draft guidance that went out to consultation not only demonstrates the Government’s commitment to well-designed places but includes specific references to considering the safety of women and girls in the design of public spaces and streets. For example, paragraph 150 makes it clear that:

“Security features should be designed to support the safety of women and girls.”

The consultation on the draft guidance has now closed. Again, my officials and I are analysing the responses received and will publish the final version in due course. When the final PPG is published, policy DP3 in the draft NPPF proposes that the principles of that PPG should apply and inform applications in the absence of local policies, guides, codes or master plans. Those local tools can do the job if a local area has put the guides in place, or applied a specific master plan to a specific development, but in the absence of those we are proposing that the national PPG would apply through proposed policy DP3 in the draft NPPF.

I thank again the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset for giving the House a chance to debate these important matters. I assure her and other hon. Members that I will reflect on the points raised in the debate in advance of setting out the Government’s final position on the NPPF and design and placemaking PPG.

17:12

[Anna Sabine]

I thank the Minister for his constructive response. It always seems to me that the Government are blessed with many feisty and brilliant female politicians trying to make sure that VAWG is rightly pushed up the political agenda. Given that we live in an environment that historically has been largely designed by and for men, I feel quite strongly that if we can manage to get a mention of the safety and wellbeing of women and girls into the NPPF it will genuinely make a difference to the way in which local authorities and other bodies treat planning, and consider it as a group.

There is often a joke that it feels as if a little more attention is paid to bats’ wellbeing than to women and girls’ wellbeing. I would love for that to change. I thank everyone who has taken part in the debate, and I thank the Minister for his comments.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the impact of planning on women’s safety in rural areas.

17:15

Sitting adjourned.