Falmouth and Penryn's campaign to prevent violence against women and girls has received a major boost after being awarded £33,000.

Cornwall Council secured the money following a successful bid to the Government's Safer Streets fund to support projects in the Falmouth area.

Falmouth and neighbouring Penryn have campuses for both Falmouth and Exeter universities, which support approximately 11,000 students in the area.

The area, therefore, has a disproportionately large number of young women aged 16-24, more than any other area in Cornwall and Falmouth and Penryn have higher rates of non-domestic VAWG crimes than the Cornwall average by around a third.

The Safer Streets grant will pay for the installation of six new CCTV cameras in Falmouth town centre.

It will also be used to support a student-led VAWG group to run awareness campaigns or projects, as well as bystander training for staff employed in the night-time economy.

Discussing the grant, Anna MacGregor, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence co-ordinator at Cornwall Council, said:

"Women and girls should not feel threatened or intimated on our streets.

"The increased CCTV is a great asset in relation to everyone's safety in Falmouth, but it is the awareness-raising and training that will have long term impact and help to highlight the longstanding risk posed to women and girls in our society.

"We have to dismantle long-standing cultural, societal and gender norms, and to do this we need to engage with everyone in our communities and collectively challenge inequality from a gender-informed perspective."

The projects will be delivered by Safer Falmouth on behalf of Cornwall's community safety partnership, Safer Cornwall.

Cllr Carol Mould, Cornwall Council's portfolio holder for neighbourhoods, added:

"At a time when the safety of women and girls on our streets is in such sharp focus, this successful bid to the Government's Safer Streets Fund is fantastic news for Falmouth."

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