Domestic Abuse Survivor Hails New ‘Restriction Zones’ Plan as Long Overdue
Domestic abuse survivors in the UK could soon breathe a little easier under a government plan to confine violent and sexual offenders to specific “restriction zones” and monitor them using GPS tracking.
Breaching these new boundaries would be a criminal offence and could mean prison time.
For many, this move has been described as overdue. For Leanne, a 54-year-old mother-of-two and survivor, the announcement sparked a surge of hope.
She said she was “ecstatic” and added: “I hope change is actually going to happen, and it’s not just pillow talk, but if it happens, then, yeah, it’s a long time coming.”
Leanne explained that, in her case, she would have requested exclusion from the school gates, her local supermarket, and family homes – all places where she had been confronted by her abuser despite restraining orders.
“If I could say those places, and I knew I could go to those places safely, happy days, I’m protected. I’ve been listening to.”
The new proposal flips the current burden of safety. Instead of survivors limiting their lives to avoid danger, offenders will face tighter restrictions. GPS tags will create “virtual boundaries”, giving probation officers real-time location data.
Justice minister Alex Davies-Jones, announcing the policy at charity Advance in London, said: “We’re putting really strong safeguards attached to these so that we can give victims and survivors the confidence to carry on with their everyday lives.”
Funding for the reform is significant, £700 million allocated to the Probation Service up to 2028/29, with 1,300 new probation officers promised by March 2026. Each case will involve detailed risk assessments and survivor input to determine banned areas for perpetrators.
Amy Glover, director at Advance, welcomed the approach but cautioned against complacency. She noted that new safety measures can create a “false sense of security” if monitoring fails, stressing the importance of rapid intervention when conditions are breached.
Reality TV personality and campaigner Georgia Harrison also endorsed the change, arguing: “Why on earth should a survivor have to pick an area and stay there for the rest of their life? It makes so much more sense that a perpetrator will be subjected to a restriction zone and a survivor can go wherever they want and feel safe.”
The initiative comes amid a wider shake-up of the prison system to tackle overcrowding. This could see some violent and sexual offenders released earlier, with technology-based monitoring playing a larger role in keeping the public safe.
For Leanne and others, hope remains guarded. “Would I put a lot of faith in it? Probably not, because I don’t like being let down, and I’ve been let down by previous governments. So we can only have hope.”
The government says legislation to bring the policy into effect will be introduced this autumn. For survivors, the wait for safety has been long, but for the first time in years, there’s a sense that change might finally be within reach.
