18 November 2024
It has been one year since the launch of our Out in London report, which looked at the experiences of the LGBTQ+ community when travelling in and around London. We were saddened to see that one in five LGBTQ+ people we spoke to said they had experienced hate crime in the past year while travelling on public transport. Concerningly, many LGBTQ+ people said they had little confidence or trust in the police or systems to effectively address and respond to their concerns, which means incidents often go unreported.
Since the launch of the report we haven’t stood still. We have held a range of presentations and lunch and learn session with new and existing stakeholders including Transport for London (TfL), policing bodies, Department for Transport (DfT), Transport Focus, the Rail Delivery Group, LGBTQ+ Venues Forum, Stonewall and a range of transport operating companies such as SWR, c2c and Greater Anglia. These sessions have enabled us to raise awareness of the key findings, and have given us a forum to discuss how we can work together to improve personal security for the LGBTQ+ community.
Later this month we will be holding a Personal Security summit in collaboration with TfL which will draw on these issues, looking at potential solutions including collaboration to third party reporting, as well as hearing from those with lived experience.
It is clear that personal security affects everyone, but by looking at the perception of personal security from the lens of the LGBTQ+ community, we build a greater understanding of what more can be done to keep everyone safe, and we look forward to continuing to drive the conversations to make travelling in London safer for everyone.
Since the launch of the report, we have
- presented our key findings to over 15 different organisations since the launch. This includes the British Transport Police and the Metropolitan Police, helping to raise awareness of the issues faced by LGBTQ+ communities which travelling in London
- shared and supported TfL’s bystander training, to empower Londoners to safely take action when they encounter hate crime on the transport network
- built relationships with LGBTQ+ organisations and allies such as Stonewall and Galop
- supported the launch of the Zoteria app [LINK], which empowers people to flag hate encounters and get support from an expert caseworker
- supported the ‘adoption’ of Vauxhall Station by its Pride Network of LGBTQ+ colleagues and allies and the national health and wellbeing charity LGBT HERO (find out more here)
