Charlotte Buckley, who works in PR and suffered kerb crawling as a student living in Leeds, says a ban would have been “great”. Charlotte was followed home from work by some men in a car on a winter evening and was left traumatised by the experience.

She says: “I think they started with the classic wolf whistling, asking for my number, asking if they could take me out, asking if I had a boyfriend. I just tried to laugh it off and ignore it. I remember even making up that I had a boyfriend to hopefully ward them off so that they would lose interest and leave me alone.”

“Then it turned into them asking why I was alone, why I was ignoring them, and at that point I tried to stand up for myself and told them that what they were doing wasn’t funny and they shouldn’t be approaching a female like this in the dark on her own and trying to intimidate her. At this point instead of driving off they thought it would be funny to swerve in front of me so I couldn’t get past them on the main road.

After that situation I made sure I rang someone every time I was walking on my own, but even years later I’m always looking over my shoulder and being super mindful of those situations, because you just don’t know what people are going to do and how ugly things could become.”

Policing Bill: an amendment to criminalise the act of kerb crawling has been blocked by MPs