Spencers Park Engagement Reports

Teenage girls should have a right to public space like their male peers; their needs should be proactively considered as provided for by the Public Sector Equality Duty (under the Equality Act 2010); and they should have access to the same benefits that the public realm offers to boys their age.

Yet they are often excluded. Such exclusions are not intentional. Too little research into girls’ experience of space and what they would like to see in the public realm has left councils and developers with few real options other than to continue with designs that don’t meet the needs of girls and young women (and only meet the needs of a minority of boys and young men).

The Spencer’s Park Engagement Programme (SPEP) sits at the crux of this issue. It is a partnership programme between LSE Cities at the London School of Economics, Countryside developers and Make Space for Girls, working with the Astley Cooper School . These two reports summarise the evidence base that supports the case for change, and the outcome of a series of 4 workshops that took place in the summer of 2022/ initiated in July 2022 and remains ongoing.