Case Study

Embedding Active Bystander Training Across the City of Southampton

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Southampton City Council wanted more than a one-off intervention. Working with the Oakridge Centre, they built in-house training capacity, a city-wide delivery pipeline, and a model that doesn't depend on external funding to sustain itself.

Southampton City Council's Community Safety team had spent seven years working to reduce violence against women and girls through the Safe City Partnership - a statutory body covering anchor institutions, universities, and the voluntary sector. It also ran a network of nearly 200 Safe Places: businesses and organisations pledged to offer immediate support to anyone who feels unsafe.

The challenge was a familiar one. Cross-agency coordination through OpDefender was strong, but most people present when something went wrong - bystanders in venues, staff in shops, passersby - had no framework for intervening safely. They sensed when something was wrong. They didn't know what to do about it.

The council commissioned the Oakridge Centre (part of First Ascent Group), to deliver Active Bystander training, with a deliberate long-term structure built in from the start. Two staff members were trained as trainers themselves - one from the community safety team, one from Go Southampton — so the capability could be embedded and sustained without ongoing external cost. A programme dependent on external delivery would always be vulnerable to budget cycles. Bringing it in-house gave the council the freedom to reach businesses, community groups, and the Safe Places network on its own terms.

The facilitator brought real depth across psychology, neuroscience, and bystander behaviour, grounding abstract concepts in accessible, practical learning. 

Rollout is running in two directions - into the business community first, then open sessions for residents across the city. Longer term, the plan is to train all 200-plus Safe Places organisations, so the people already committed to offering refuge can also be equipped to prevent situations from escalating. The programme feeds into Southampton's Purple Flag accreditation ahead of the city's November assessment, and Active Bystander training will become standard induction for volunteers on the council's night-time welfare bus.

Participant feedback was unanimous: 100% satisfaction with both the sessions and the facilitator's subject knowledge. The broader outcomes resist easy measurement - a situation that doesn't escalate leaves no data trail - but the infrastructure is concrete: trained in-house capacity, a delivery pipeline into hundreds of organisations, and a self-sustaining model ready to scale.
Active Bystander training is never one-size-fits-all. Every programme is tailored to the needs of the organisation, and while the Southampton programme focused on community safety, the same training is equally at home in a workplace context, helping organisations build the confidence, skills, and culture for people to speak up, step in, and look out for one another.

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From a small initial investment, we’ve seen real results including strong feedback from participants and a training programme we’re now able to deliver ourselves. The booking process was seamless - fast response, flexible scheduling, and no procurement headaches. Exactly what you need when you’re working to tight timescales with public funding.
Francesca Prior, Service Manager
Stronger Communities, Southampton City Council