North Devon Council is committed to making sure everyone can enjoy a night out safely, and we work closely with the local venues, community partners and the police to support a range of initiatives.
Ask for Angela
Ask for Angela is a national campaign that aims to ensure anyone who is feeling vulnerable or unsafe is able to get the support they need.
The Ask for Angela scheme is used by bars and other venues to keep people safe when they feel unsafe or are in an uncomfortable situation. Staff are given training to follow the correct procedure to support individuals to help prevent ‘causing a scene’. Assistance could include reuniting them with a friend, seeing them to a taxi, or if it’s a serious safety issue, alerting venue security and/or the police.
Find out more about the scheme, as well as downloadable resources, on the Ask for Angela website.
Project NightEye
Project Nighteye is a Devon and Cornwall Police campaign to specifically target the male perpetrators of Sexual Violence in the Evening and Night-time Economy. The project aims to make public spaces safer for women and girls and deter crime.
The aim is to prevent sexual and other crimes by proactively identifying predatory sexual behaviour and intervening to prevent this escalating to an offence. This could include groups or individual men, either on foot or in vehicles, loitering for no reason. It could include men making unwanted contact towards women, attempting to isolate women from their friends on a night out or making lewd or sexual comments.
Local police officers actively work in collaboration with partners, such as venue security staff and CCTV operators to identify and target potential offenders. More information is available on the Devon and Cornwall Police website
Information to premises
When Devon and Cornwall Police attend licensed premises in our area they provide a ‘Licensing Information’ booklet which includes three Project NightEye A5 posters and one Crimestoppers Rural Drink Drive A5 Poster. They discuss Ask for Angela and provide posters for both staff and customers.
Ongoing oversight of both schemes is discussed on a continual rolling programme with Personal License Holders (PLH) and Designated Premises Supervisors (DPS).
Anti-spiking initiatives
Free online training is provided to support venues and staff in response to a suspected spiking incident. Devon and Cornwall Police also provide venues with guidance on how to respond to spiking.
Soroptimist International Barnstaple and District, which aims to improve the lives of women and girls, as part of their ‘Stamp out Spiking’ campaign, put together anti-spiking kits using funding from North Devon Council and others. Hundreds of free kits are distributed to licenced premises across North Devon and Torridge at regular intervals by police. The packs contain deterrents including fluorescent bottle stoppers and self-adhesive foil lids, known as ‘Spikeys’ and ‘StopTops’.
Night bus service
A night bus service runs in North Devon each Saturday night from May until 20 December 2025, with routes from Barnstaple to Bideford via Fremington, and Barnstaple to Ilfracombe via Braunton, for a fare of £3.
The service will also run on Factory Friday (19 December) and New Year's Eve.
View the timetable, or find out more information on the Stagecoach website.
Please note services remain on British Summer Time (BST), so will finish an hour earlier than stated on the timetable.
Streetsafe App
Members of the public can also use the StreetSafe app, available for both iPhone and Android devices.
The app allows anyone to anonymously report public places where they have felt unsafe for whatever reason, such as being followed or verbally abused.
The information it provides is invaluable to the police for building a picture of where best to deploy their resources, and for partner agencies to consider if any environmental improvements can be made.