‘We’ve haven’t lost sight of what matters most’: Reflecting on 10 years at the Suzy Lamplugh Trust

It was 2018. I was at the office when journalists arrived at our front door. They thought the police had found Suzy Lamplugh’s body after she had been missing for over 35 years and for a moment, it seemed we might finally learn what had happened to her. Unfortunately, Suzy’s body has still never been discovered. We were deeply saddened when Paul Lamplugh passed away in 2018, particularly because this meant that he (and Diana Lamplugh who passed away in 2011) never found out what happened to their daughter. Despite this, Suzy’s life and memory live on, in the continued work of the Trust.  

I joined the Trust originally as a consultant over 10 years ago and at the time we had a small team running the National Stalking Helpline. Victims were all telling us of the poor criminal justice outcomes, the lack of specialised mental health support for victims or any interventions for perpetrators. I am proud of the remarkable growth we have had across our frontline services. In addition to the National Stalking Helpline, our National Stalking Service is now delivering frontline advocacy support across the country – including through our regional services: London Stalking Support and our programme in Cleveland. In 2020 we launched our PATHS programme (Psychological Advocacy to Heal from Stalking), a trauma-focused approach to supporting and empowering stalking victims. We have developed groundbreaking tools such as our ‘Am I being stalked’ platform, an online tool which allows victims of stalking to obtain advice if they feel they are being stalked. To date, over 100,000 people have been supported through our services.  

It has been an honour to build on the work of my predecessors.  The Trust’s late CEO Rachel Griffin was an inspiring leader and an impressive campaigner for victims’ rights. Building on her work, in 2019 we saw the Stalking Protection Act come into force, which led to the introduction of Stalking Protection Orders. Around the same time, we launched the pilot of the world-first Multi-Agency Stalking Intervention Programmes (MASIPs), to ensure a robust criminal justice response is paired with perpetrator intervention to effect long-term behavioral change.  

Our work on stalking sits at the intersection of harassment, public safety, personal safety, and workplace safety. Jo Cox’s murder is a stark reminder of this. Following this tragedy, I was seconded to parliament for a year to help improve safety for elected officials and in particular women in public spaces. This event brought into sharp focus the violence, aggression, abuse of women both in public spaces and increasingly online. 

Covid of course changed the landscape we were working in, and presented a multitude of new challenges. Stalking increasingly moved online, with cyber and online abuse becoming a growing threat, and our ways of working transformed almost overnight. Watching our team adapt—moving to remote working immediately and delivering our training online within weeks—was nothing short of amazing. 

Thanks to the incredible work of our staff and support of our partners, the organisation continued to grow in strength post-Covid. In 2022, we submitted a super complaint on the police handling of stalking together with the National Stalking Consortium. The resulting investigation confirmed what victims had been telling us for years – that many police were failing to believe victims, or recognise and investigate stalking.  We have developed Lifeline training to help educate police in how to improve their response to stalking and the super complaint recommendations. In addition, we are delighted that our work in ensuring that Independent Stalking Advocates (ISAs) are formally recognised in the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 helped bring stalking support into the same framework as other specialist victim support roles to strengthen consistency, awareness and accountability around support for victims of stalking. 

The tragic murder of Sarah Everard also highlighted the increasing need to address the normalisation of violence against women and girls including sexual harassment. In 2022 we launched our Stand Up Against Harassment training, developed with Right To Be, which empowers people to recognise and safely challenge inappropriate behaviour. Alongside training on the Worker Protection Act to prevent sexual harassment and other established courses, this bystander-focused approach ensures we are working not only to respond to violence and abuse, but to prevent it before it occurs. 

I am proud to say that the Trust has trained over a million people since its inception, covering workplace and lone worker personal safety, stalking and harassment, and safety in public spaces and on public transport. Our dedication to making transport safer has resulted in our longest standing campaign on taxi and private hire vehicle licensing  reaching a milestone with the passing of The Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Act in 2022,  and a government commitment in 2025 to introduce national standards for driver licensing, which are key steps towards improving safety. 

Despite these monumental milestones, there is still much more to be done across our work on stalking, harassment and personal safety.  The challenges are evolving, and we must evolve with them. The long-awaited publication of the Government’s Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategy is a pivotal moment—and a clear call for collective action. It presents a critical opportunity to accelerate progress and underscores the vital role the Trust plays in helping to halve violence against women and girls by ensuring that victims of stalking and harassment are not forgotten. 

As we mark the 40th anniversary of Suzy Lamplugh’s disappearance this year, this moment demands not just reflection but action. Four decades on, we must ensure that progress is not measured in policy alone, but in real-world outcomes: meaningful protection, timely justice, and lasting change for those most at risk today. 

We call on policymakers, practitioners, partners, and all those working to prevent violence to stand with us as online harms escalate, far-right extremism gains ground, misogyny deepens, and justice is too often delayed or denied. In this climate, those most at risk are increasingly sidelined, marginalised, and silenced. Together, we must centre the voices of those affected by violence and aggression, listen to their experiences, and act on what they tell us. The Trust will continue to place victims and survivors at the heart of everything we do, however lasting change cannot be achieved alone. It requires shared commitment and collective action, to challenge the systems and structures that allow harm to persist and to build a safer future for everyone. 

We look forward to working together with you all to forge a safer, fairer future—one that centres victims and survivors and delivers real change as we embark on the next phase of our journey.