Safety Initiatives

Women's Night Safety Charter NI

Northern Ireland is a safe place, but too many women feel unsafe when travelling, working, or going out at night.

The Northern Ireland Executive Office is working with stakeholders to prioritise the safety of women and girls. As key stakeholders, Hospitality Ulster and White Ribbon NI have joined forces to adopt the Women’s Night Safe Charter and support its rollout in Northern Ireland.

The charter is a commitment by organisations and businesses operating at night to support the campaign to End Violence Against Women and Girls.

To support the Women's Night Safety Charter NI, the ask is for all organisations and businesses that operate at night to sign-up to seven pledges:

• Nominate a champion in your organisation / business who actively promotes women’s night safety
• Demonstrate to staff and customers that your organisation takes women’s safety at night seriously, for example through a communications campaign
• Remind customers and staff that Northern Ireland is safe, but tell them what to do if they experience harassment when working, going out or travelling
• Encourage reporting by victims and bystanders as part of your communications campaign
• Train staff to ensure that all women who report are believed
• Train staff to ensure that all reports are recorded and responded to
• Design your public spaces and workplaces to make them safer for women at night

To sign up to the charter please visit the Hospitality Ulster website.

Ask for Angela

The PSNI have joined together with licensed venues and security staff across Northern Ireland to help keep people safe while enjoying a night out.

The safety initiative ‘Ask for Angela’ is being rolled out to bars, clubs and other licensed businesses across Northern Ireland.

What is ‘Ask for Angela’?

Anyone who is feeling unsafe, vulnerable or threatened can discreetly seek help by approaching staff in registered venues and asking them for ‘Angela’. This code-phrase will indicate to trained staff that they require help. This might be through reuniting them with a friend, seeing them to a taxi, or by calling venue security and/or Police

What is ‘Ask for Angela’ trying to achieve?

The aim is for as many local businesses across Northern Ireland to sign up to support the ‘Ask for Angela’ scheme and commit to training their staff. Also to raise awareness of the scheme amongst the wider public so they feel confident to seek help if they need.

The training package for the scheme is now available to access on the Hospitality Ulster website here.

Any venue that wishes to take part must first register via the link above to sign up to the scheme and then they will be given access to the bespoke training package for their staff and promotional materials for their venue.

The training explores what vulnerability is, how to identify it and appropriate interventions to take if someone ‘Asks for Angela’.

The PSNI have designed and created a map for the public that will pinpoint venues who have signed up and took part in the training. You can find this by clicking here.

Ask for Angela Toolkit

Ask for Angela Toolkit is a series of new graphical assets and key messages that we need your help to reach local businesses and the wider community with.

What's In The Toolkit?

• Graphical Assets – how to download
• Key messages & template press release
• How to share
• Contacts
• Website

Download the toolkit:

All of the assets seen below are now available for download from the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s website here.