Lawrence Bowman, MD of train operator South Western Railway (SWR) last year bluntly called (in correspondence with British Transport Police) the model of policing of Britain’s railways ‘inefficient’ and wanted to ‘inject some pace’ into work on unifying security and police. A report to the BTP Authority’s December meeting meanwhile offered the prospect of ‘a better service for less overall cost’ thanks to a ‘unified approach’ to policing and security. Full speed ahead?! Mark Rowe asks.
The report suggests integration is ‘arguably one of the greatest opportunities for efficiency for the railway’, thanks to ‘a single operating picture through shared tasking, intelligence exchange and co‑location where needed, delivering quicker on‑scene times, better situational awareness and stronger deterrence of crime and antisocial behaviour’. Such then is the prize; info sent to non-police staff mobile devices; and data such as live‑streaming body‑worn video giving ‘a single version of the truth during incidents’, leading to outcomes, such as identified suspects and missing persons, and ‘solved outcomes’. As with any integration, everyone would have to do their bit; SWR has its own safety and security reporting app, that links to the BTP. But as Bowman pointed out, train operators (including him) will want to see ‘an uplift in intelligence analysts’ from BTP, if the operators are to take up a single reporting app. A problem; the force is admitting to itself that most of its proposed capital spends – whether on buildings, or tech such as live streaming of body-worn or drone video – is ‘unaffordable’. Finance, and kit, then, are needed to make integration work; yet also agreements on who does what – what do rail staff on platforms and at ticket gates handle, when do they call upon a security officer, and when do either escalate to BTP?
As background, to quote from the BTP Authority report, ‘BTP continues to operate within a rail industry undergoing significant reform and financial constraint’. The force’s budget is roughly £450m a year, less than the biggest urban forces such as West Midlands and the Met; and roughly on a par with Kent, Merseyside, Sussex; and twice as much as rural forces such as Norfolk. One rail operator, Southeastern Rail, spends £15.8m is spent on private security, compared with £12m on BTP. And yet the rail operator is reporting crime is increasing on its routes. That ‘mixed economy’ has to be in balance; ‘the right people with the right powers in the right places’. Given that security staff have fewer powers, less equipment and less capabilities than police officers, security staff may regularly need to call BTP to deal with a range of incidents; such as vandalism and trespass (that need an arrest). And yet many on the railways (as in retail) will complain that much crime and anti-social behaviour goes unreported due to a belief that the police won’t follow-up. Also, to state the obvious, it can take BTP (like any 999 service) time to reach the spot, depending on location and other calls. In July 2025, a trespasser on the line in rural Warwickshire threatened a freight train driver. It took BTP 55 minutes to arrive, and three more hours to resolve the situation; BTP at nearby Birmingham and Coventry were occupied on other emergency calls. The freight operator DRS complained that its other drivers were feeling vulnerable. In terms of national security, DRS also serves the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing site; and Cumbria is hardly the most accessible county.
Politics
Politically, the Labour Government is to legislate towards more nationalised railways, a reform agenda ‘centred on performance, cost reduction, and transition to GBR’, Great British Railways based in Derby, also meaning ‘greater emphasis on value for money and visible safety outcomes. Passenger confidence remains critical to revenue recovery, and a visible, engaged police presence is essential to deterring crime and reassuring the public’, according to the report. Reform also means integrated ‘policing and security resources’.
Geography
To briefly set out the case for integration; people, particularly women, want to see a presence; whether police or hired security, to feel reassured. The report to the Authority noted that in autumn 2025, ‘BTP used overtime to deploy visible patrols at Kings Cross and St Pancras every evening for three weeks; staff assaults fell by 59 per cent, violence by 21pc, public order by 41pc, shoplifting by 25pc’; only, as that implies, paying overtime isn’t a regular option, let alone for everywhere (London has several other termini; the country’s busiest station is Liverpool Street). The BTP admits that it balanced its budget in 2025 by ‘delaying project spend and holding a significant reliance on controlling churn’ – in other words, leaving vacancies open (meaning more overtime paid?!). If resources can’t stretch, why not at least make them stretch further by hiring contract security? Besides, as the report admitted, vacancies create ‘pockets of risk’, whether in a department or in terms of geography. The GWR Head of Security, Charlotte Murray, last year raised with the force concerns about a lack of BTP in Oxford and Yeovil; and the ‘far west’, Devon and Cornwall, even though that region becomes busier in the summer. Weymouth and Bournemouth, too, are known ‘hotspots’ for bad behaviour on trains and stations. The force’s ‘reset’, it admits, ‘has reduced the visibility of BTP, with 11 police stations having closed’. For BTP, like other forces, years of austerity have left the force ‘more fragile’. For example, event policing remains ‘a pressure point, particularly in Manchester and Cardiff, where large venues like Co-op Live, AO Arena, and Principality Stadium drive high footfall’. Andy Mellor, train operator Avanti MD, emailed last year to BTP concern that ‘BTP response to site and recovery’ by scenes of crime officers when persons have been struck by trains ‘is something which we feel has worsened over the past 18 months’.
Violence
Austerity has also meant ‘loss of specialist capabilities’; train operators for example want BTP to keep a small ‘work related violence’ unit. The rail operator SWR raised an issue with police about the force not investigating assaults on staff (hardly only an issue on the railways; also in hospitals). That unit found 40 per cent of staff assault cases were ‘closed’ because the assaulted person would not help police. Work got this percentage reduced (though only down to at best 20pc). The force gave training to rail staff about how to report cases, and how to manage violent incidents and aggression.
Tech
On the tech side, a ‘National CCTV Upgrade Programme’ costing an initial £17.2m seeks to connect more than 50,000 cameras (including 12,000 at Category A, ‘national hub’ stations such as Birmingham New Street) to a cloud-based platform. The aims include real-time access, analytics and integration with body-worn and on-train video. As for tangible benefits, they stand to include faster resolution of incidents, reduced station hand back times (that is, a scene of crime returned to passenger use) and ‘swifter justice’. Other tech that BTP is embracing is drones; ‘BTP is working to deploy 12 Drone-in-a-Box (DIAB) assets at key disruption hotspot locations, identified through ongoing partnership work on the Southeastern Route, covering the Network Rail Central route, and on the Northern/TransPennine route.’
Rail views
A letter by GWR MD Mark Hopwood to the force last year acknowledged cost; besides duty of care; and ‘the risk of losing the confidence of our customers and communities’. When crime is not dealt with, he went on, that can brings costs – whether to customers or staff; and in terms of performance (the Government’s priority, as he noted). Ahead of the Authority’s December meeting, the rail union RMT complained that policing cuts had gone too far, ‘and are putting staff and passengers at an increasing risk of violence’, according to RMT General Secretary Eddie Dempsey. The Rail Delivery Group, made up of train operators, admits a need for ‘a better joint approach to managing hotspots, identifying them and dealing with them together’.
Photo by Mark Rowe: Birmingham New Street.
