Statement: The Impact of Operation Pisces and the police operation, Clear, Hold, Build, on Women’s Health and Safety in Enfield

Since October 2024, the Metropolitan Police Service has been running what it calls “Operation Pisces” in Enfield, alongside a Clear, Hold, Build policing approach. While presented as a response to serious crime and antisocial behaviour, women in the long-established red light area tell a very different story.

We are basing what we say here directly on the experiences of women in this area who are in regular contact with us. From late 2024 onwards, women began reporting heavy police patrols, aggressive treatment, and the issuing of ASBOs, loitering notices and cautions. By early January 2025, women were contacting us in distress.

What Women Are Experiencing

Women describe police being “everywhere.” They report being constantly moved on, shouted at, threatened with arrest, and, in some cases, issued with ASBOs or other enforcement notices. The practical effect has been to disperse women from the better-known stretches of road into surrounding residential roads and the edges of parks.

This displacement has made women more isolated and vulnerable. Several women have told us that attacks have increased as a result. When women are forced to rush negotiations and move into more isolated, less visible areas to avoid police, the risks to their safety escalate dramatically.

One single mother of two young children, who returned to street work after losing her retail job, described how relationships with local officers had previously been civil. Under Operation Pisces, she said officers were aggressive and threatening. She managed to avoid getting an ASBO; others she worked alongside did not. She felt migrant women were being particularly targeted.

Women who once stood in a relatively well-known area now say they feel hunted.

The Health Impact

The impact on women’s physical and mental health has been devastating.

Many street-based sex workers are survivors of rape, long-term domestic abuse, and extreme violence. Being shouted at, threatened, or physically intimidated by police is unbearable. Women report being fearful and feeling persecution.

We have heard directly from women who withdrew from local health services because they were located in the area of the crackdown, avoided outreach teams for fear of being identified, experienced worsening drug use as distress increased and support networks fell apart, lost housing as their lives became more unstable, became frightened that Social Services might take their children.

One woman, living in a single room with her two small children after fleeing domestic violence, described the stress as overwhelming. Her Universal Credit had been stopped, and she was already struggling to survive.

When women no longer feel able to approach police — even when they are victims of crime — violent men are able to act with impunity. Violent attacks go up as a result.

Who Are the Women?

The women in our network there are both migrant and non-migrant women. Migrant women feel targeted by violent men and by the police for arrest and anti-social behaviour orders. A number of the non-migrant women have historic convictions or prostitute’s cautions. Some had previously left sex work but were forced back by a range of issues including rising poverty, benefit sanctions, the two-child limit, the benefit cap, and a chronic lack of affordable housing.

Street-based sex workers are overwhelmingly women trying to survive poverty, homelessness, and the fallout of domestic abuse. Criminalisation compounds whatever crisis they are going through. A prostitute’s caution or conviction can have lifelong consequences — barring access to other jobs, housing, and even put you at risk of losing custody of your child.

Under Operation Pisces women on the street are treated as antisocial. Aggressive policing does not stop women working. It makes their work more dangerous.

Despite the harm that women speak about, we are shocked to hear that the operation has been publicly described by the police as a success.

Women’s safety, health and survival must be the priority. In the immediate term, women need: financial support so they are not forced to work on the street; secure and stable housing; access to health and outreach services without fear of arrest; protection from violence without being criminalised.

In the longer term, we are campaigning for the repeal of loitering and soliciting laws and for prostitute’s cautions to be scrapped as part of full decriminalisation. In 2022, Belgium decriminalised sex work, and sex workers won labour rights including access to maternity and sick pay, and strengthening their right to refuse clients. Crucially, police priorities shifted away from prosecuting women.

There is precedent for emergency support here in the UK too. Following the murders of five women in Ipswich in 2006, the authorities provided rapid practical support — including a designated phone line, emergency cash payments, help with housing, debt and even dental work. This meant women could stop working on the street. Much of this support was withdrawn when the serial murdered was caught.

There is no reason similar support could not be provided in Enfield today.

Police crackdowns do not end sex work. They push women into greater danger. Women’s lives and safety must come first.