In July 2021, the UK government launched the £5 million Safety of Women at Night (SWaN) Fund. This provided funding for interventions that aimed to improve feelings of safety and prevent violence against women and girls (VAWG) in public spaces at night. Civil society organisations, local authorities, Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs), and the Chief Constable of the British Transport Police could bid for funding up to £300,000. The Home Office received 82 eligible bids across England and Wales, of which 22 were awarded SWaN funding. Each successful bid delivered multiple interventions targeted at two core beneficiary groups, namely users of public spaces at night and key worker groups in the night-time economy (NTE). Interventions were delivered from November 2021 to the end of March 2022.

The Home Office commissioned Verian (formerly known as Kantar Public UK) and Ecorys UK to carry out a process and impact evaluation of the SWaN Fund, employing the following aims and approaches:

• A Fund-level impact evaluation to determine the net impact of SWaN interventions on target populations across the funded areas. Impact was measured by collecting and analysing survey data on key outcomes, including perceptions of safety, awareness of interventions, and intervention-specific outcomes from target populations in intervention and counterfactual areas. A face-to-face (F2F) survey was conducted of women using public spaces at night (n=1168), and an email survey of NTE workers (n=465). The survey data were supplemented by applying the Qualitative Impact Protocol (QuIP) methodology. This involved conducting in-depth interviews with a sample (n=23) of F2F survey respondents and eliciting open-text responses to the email survey to understand the causal factors attributed to changes in perceptions of safety.
• A process evaluation to understand the key facilitators and challenges for bid teams at each stage of the SWaN programme, and to identify good practice emerging from SWaN. The process evaluation employed a range of research methods, specifically a document review, proforma survey with bid teams, in-depth interviews, and case studies with 8 funded areas. Across the in-depth interviews and case study research, 53 individuals participated in interviews or focus groups.

Data collection took place from February to May 2022. A 3-week pause in fieldwork occurred from mid-April to early May due to restrictions imposed on government activities prior to local elections.