Community Safety
We work with partners to help create a safe and secure district through crime reduction initiatives, training and night-time economy support.
City Safe Bus
Launched in September 2025, the City Safe Bus is a converted former ambulance staffed by police officers, medics and volunteers from other organisations including the Samaritans and specialist NHS mental health services. It is situated next to the taxi rank outside Liverpool Street Station – the busiest rail station in the UK – every Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 6pm-11.30pm.
Purchased by Eastern City and Aldgate Connect BIDs then donated to the City of London Police, the mobile welfare hub provides medical treatment, mental health support, police assistance, refuge, light refreshments, a place to safely await family/friends and facilities to charge your phone.
Nighttime Safety Initiatives
Night Time Economy Support
Operation ‘Reframe’ is the City of London Police’s strategy for reducing vulnerability, anti-social behaviour and offences (particularly violence against women & girls) in the evening and night-time economy. It brings together businesses, law enforcement, and community partners to ensure that venues and public spaces are welcoming and secure for everyone. The initiative focuses on crime prevention, venue safety standards and visible policing; culminating in a mass deployment one Thursday a month. It is within this framework that our night-time economy support projects sit.
The Welfare Hub
The Welfare Hub was launched over the 2023 festive period as The City’s first welfare programme and medical support service to help vulnerable members of the public in the night-time economy. Operating from the church hall at St Botolph’s Without Bishopsgate, across 33 shifts the team of medics assisted 136 members of the public. This significantly reduced pressure on the City of London Police and NHS during this exceptionally busy period – 71% of calls for assistance came via the police and an estimated 58 ambulance callouts were avoided at a saving to the NHS of approximately £16,000.
Cycle Medics
In December 2024 the Welfare Hub concept evolved with us instead funding cycle medics from St John Ambulance to deploy every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night alongside the City of London Police’s Cycle Team. Across 11 shifts the medics attended over 40 requests for assistance ranging from mental health crises to road traffic collisions, intoxication and assaults; 38 people were treated and 28 ambulance callouts avoided.
In May 2025 the cycle medic scheme became a year-round initiative with St John Ambulance staff now patrolling the Square Mile every Thursday from 6pm-11pm (increasing to Thursday-Saturday in December). Since then, they have treated 107 members of the public and so impactful has it been that our partnership is a shortlisted finalist in the 2026 Outstanding Security Professionals Awards and a replica model explored for nationwide police forces.
Taxi Marshals
This initiative, organised by the City of London Crime Prevention Association with funding from Eastern City BID and the neighbouring Aldgate Connect BID, provides taxi marshals outside Liverpool Street Station every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night between 10pm and 1am. The taxi marshals – themselves black-cab drivers – are there to manage demand, prevent anti-social behaviour, provide help and reassurance to passengers, and prevent the use of unlicensed cabs. As of November 2025, they had facilitated 35,270 journeys, including 63,903 total passengers with 49% lone females, 2,303 children and 355 disabled passengers.
Personal Safety & Crime Reduction
Mobile phone marking events
Funded and organised by the five City BIDs in partnership with the City of London Police, the security marking of personal and work phones aims to reduce theft and reunite stolen/lost devices with their owners. Since June 2025, 2,572 phones have been marked by Eastern City BID alone with the free kits handed out to local employees at 15 on-street and in-building events.
‘Hidden Harm’ Training
To support our safety initiatives and assist with Operation Reframe, Eastern City BID delivered several free crime prevention and personal safety training sessions in 2023/24, partnering with charities such as the Employers’ Initiative on Domestic Abuse (EIDA), Hestia and The Suzy Lamplugh Trust. With a particular focus on ‘Hidden Harm’ offences such as stalking, harassment and domestic abuse, these workshops explored how these issues affect staff in the workplace and what employers can do to support them. 121 local employees registered for the training sessions.
Suicide Prevention with Bridge Watch
Since 2025 we have provided funding to the Bridge Watch charity – a volunteer-led organisation which patrols the five City of London bridges helping those in mental distress or feeling suicidal. Through our association with Bridge Watch, online suicide awareness and prevention training has been made available to our business community with two sessions run to date accommodating 46 people. With thousands of workers traveling in and out of the City each day, they can act as the ‘eyes and ears’ for our public spaces and even workplaces, hence learning how to recognise and support a friend, family member, colleague or a stranger who may be suffering from mental ill health is incredibly important.
CityINTEL
CityINTEL is an emergency email alerts system courtesy of the City of London Police who message private security teams and the broader business community to share information on security incidents, protests, civil emergencies, building evacuations and road closures. Run by the City of London Police and part-funded by Eastern City BID, we continue to encourage people to sign up to this initiative to promote safety in the Square Mile.
Emergency Response Training
In March 2024/25 Eastern City BID supported ‘Exercise Iron Titan’, a live emergency exercise organised by the City Security Council that imitated a train crash at Cannon Street Station. This tested the response plans of the police, fire brigade, ambulance service, train operating companies and neighbouring businesses with over 400 people taking part.