A security job that in 2005 included the G8 summit, football and horse racing sounds like it has glamour.
The downside (there always is one) is that you can get sworn at and called (as the person in question is a woman) a bitch. Sue Buzzeo, staff and revenue protection manager for train operator GNER, talks to Mark Rowe.
Speaking from GNER’s head offices in York, she began by explaining her remit. “To some it may appear to be an odd combination, staff protection and revenue protection; but if you review the staff assaults, there is a strong correlation between fare evaders and crime incidents – whether verbal or physical abuse. Quite often, if you look at providing strategies and initiatives for assisting staff, it has an impact on the revenue as well.” Hence her task is to develop ways to protect revenues, and identify the areas of risk; meanwhile looking at how to improve staff and passenger safety; managing a relationship with the British Transport Police (BTP); and developing ways of going about internal prosecutions.” She has staff ‘on the road’ working in revenue protection and a core team of about seven, based in York.
What of her background: is it in security, the railways, or neither? “Neither,” she replies. “Actually I am MCIPD [a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development], so my background is in HR [human resources]. And I ran an internet business for a number of years, which was sold to a company in London in 1999. So I joined GNER in 2000 and essentially when I first came in, I came in on a PA’s role, secretarial role, because having been involved in my business and being involved 24-7 I really wanted to take some time out and have a role with no hassle, no strings, come in at 9 and go at 5.” But, as is the way, she took a look around the company and came to understand it, and moved into HR, “and was internal communications manager for GNER for about three years. Then came the opportunity for becoming staff and revenue protection manager; it was moving back into an operational role and I really fancied a change.”
She adds that at this stage she had been working about five months as a special constable, in an initiative backed by the employer. [Professional Security has reported last year and most recently in June on a Metropolitan Police scheme, ShopWatch to encourage retailers and more recently universities to release staff to become specials.] The employer sends would-be specials for two weeks’ training, and releases the employee for two days a month; and each special puts in around a day a month of their own time, in Sue’s case as part of the BTP. With her understanding by then of the railways, policing, and staff assaults, she felt she would like to do something about it: “And I have loved it ever since.”
What of links between a train operator with responsibility for major stations like York – GNER – and the non-railway world? Put another way, a hooligan could cause trouble in York city centre, and be known to security staff in York shops, and walk onto York station and be a nuisance there – does that suggest links are worthwhile? Sue replies that the rail firm has links with civil police besides the BTP. “And there are occasions when an individual will have had an anti-social behaviour order against them, which relates to the city centre, which encompasses the station as well, and vice versa. We might have identified individuals within the station and their ASBO might not just be for the station environment, but around as well. We have managed to obtain three ASBOs at Newcastle and one at Doncaster; we are just working with the BTP now, because there has been a step-change in the Data Protection Act, and what we are actually able to do; and we are now in a position where we can produce posters of these individuals but we are not allowed to display them in a public area – we would not want to. We are able to display them in staff rest rooms and signing on points, and only in the area that the ASBO has been obtained; for example, I couldn’t put the poster of my three guys in Newcastle at King’s Cross [GNER’s London terminus]. But I could in Newcastle.” Thanks to these posters, station and on-train staff are easily able to identify the person with an ASBO, and relay, Sue adds, real-time information to the BTP.
So GNER has gone down the ASBO road – what have the orders been like to use? She replies: “It’s quite difficult to get staff into the habit of reporting. I think society has changed, unfortunately, whereby we are more tolerant of, and we expect more, anti-social behaviour as being the norm.” She goes on to say that she appreciates that a member of staff might be quite uncomfortable to put in a report saying, ‘someone told me to eff off’. Such anti-social behaviour, Sue suggests, has become a commonplace experience for staff. Her point: “It has been quite an exercise to get staff to understand that the only way we can get an ASBO against these individuals is if you report every single incident that takes place, every spitting, every push, every shove, every eff off, bad behaviour towards other passengers. We need to have that in writing, because unless we can build a file, we wouldn’t have a hope in hell of getting in in front of magistrate [who makes ASBOs].” A member of staff may report an incident, and say, ‘it isn’t the first time’, but Sue’s reply that to her, and the criminal justice system, it is the first time. “So it has been quite an onerous task and a slow process to get staff to understand that while it might seem fairly immaterial [to report a particular incident], that might be the difference between getting an ASBO or not.”
Sue gives the example of a member of staff who had faced a group of schoolchildren travelling regularly on a service, being loud, and abusive, and badly-behaved, “basically making it difficult for other passengers”. Things escalated, and a child put in a charge against the staff member claiming that the employee had pushed the youth. There was nothing in the charges and they were dropped. Sue recalls: “It was quite difficult and it was quite a learning curve for that train crew that if they put in all these reports we would have a much better case to say, ‘your behaviour has been reported on many occasions’.”
And then there are particular events that bring a surge of rail passengers – the G8 summit in Scotland in the summer; football matches; and the running of 2005’s Ascot at York racecourse, while Ascot is refurbished. GNER decided to ‘gate’ York station during Ascot, “because we had up to 25,000 people going through the gate at York. It was a high-profile event, so we really didn’t want to get it wrong.” Gating involves uniformed staff directing passengers to the ‘gate’ for ticket examination. People who reckoned on not paying in the crush, or people who were truly not able to buy a ticket, must buy a ticket at the gate to proceed. Sue recalls her time on the gating operation at York-Ascot: “I was pushed and shoved and told to eff off, and I was a jobsworth, and a stupid bitch, and everything, and it wasn’t second nature to go and write a report, so I did understand how the staff feel, when it comes to reporting.” But filling in such reports are the way to address unacceptable behaviour, she adds.
“And that’s why our drinking policy has come into place,” she goes on. Railway bylaws, she explains, allow any part of the railway to refuse someone under the influence of alcohol. GNER, then, have always been able to say no to drunk (or drunk-seeming) passengers; but as Sue admits, for a customer service company, it can be uncomfortable to say no to someone trying to get on a train. Perhaps, she admits, the rail operator should have acted on the issue of drunken passengers sooner.
“Every month, month after month, when I review the main drivers of staff assault, it’s ticket irregularities and drink. The same two hit the radar, time and time again. This year, we wanted to make a bold statement about passengers under the influence of alcohol. There is no way on earth we are going to change this overnight. It is going to take a long time, a couple of years to get a culture change, and a culture change within our staff, to be able to have the confidence to say, no.” It requires a change by passengers, she adds. Most people know that they can no longer go to an airport drunk, leering and shouting – or rather, they can no longer be like that at an airport and expect to board their ’plane.
GNER is talking, then, to football clubs known to have the most disruptive fans; and is running a poster campaign. The warning: if fans are travelling away and whether they win or lose if they get carried away, and are pushing and shoving staff … well, as for the G8 and big York race meetings like the Ebor, stations will be gated, and an external security company brought in to provide contract staff to support ticket examiners. Sue warns: “Anybody kicking off, anybody getting drunk, you are not going through the gate.” If someone is under the influence, and denied entry to the platform, they will be advised to buy a coffee, sober up, and modify their behaviour. And if they have a valid ticket specific to one train, and they are missing that train, they have to understand that they have to buy another ticket. Sue repeats, this is not something that will change overnight. “We will never get to the stage where we will have nobody drunk on our trains, and we don’t want you to be stone cold sober; but you will treat our staff with courtesy; no urinating and pukeing in our carriages. And don’t be disruptive and intimidating to the rest of our passengers and staff – that’s history now.”
I ask Sue to go over the Ascot gating at York in more detail, because I had experience of it as a passenger, on a June Saturday, leaving York station but not going to the races. The crowd heading on the walkway over the tracks [readers not familiar with the layout of York railway station please bear with us!] was thick; and at the turning to the stairs, I tried to walk not with the rest of the flow, but a female member of staff firmly but politely verbally and by hand signals directed me to the left with the rest. For a moment my blood was up; I was not a part of this crowd, I wanted to go faster! I said nothing however and was herded out, along two lines of low temporary fencing showed my ticket at the end, and walked into the open, where race-goers could catch buses to the racecourse. My point relating my tale: yes, GNER did a good job, but it was a tricky operation? Sue replies: “There was a minority, I have to say, who were quite vocal, ‘this is my normal station and I don’t see why I have to walk a different way’.” But staff could tell passengers, and they could see for themselves, that the station is not geared to take thousands of race-goers. Sue adds: “You were herded – your word – in a direction, but it is for your safety. If it was an open station, there would be so much chaos. Because different people would be trying to go different ways.” The gating operation has members of staff at key points for passengers to ask directions and so on. “Can you imagine what it would be like, with two or three thousand people not knowing where they are going, all looking for somebody in a uniform.” The way GNER did it, while it might have been slightly inconvenient to some, Sue admits, was proven right. She gives the example of being yelled at by a man who was not happy because he had to go a much longer way than usual to buy a newspaper at an on-platform newsagent. The man did return to say sorry and that staff were professional – and he gave Sue some chocolates. “And that kind of said it all,” Sue recalls. In other words, the gating is a hassle for many, but the railways do it because they have to – to guard against a crowd of people falling off the platform onto the track, for instance.
Is this a case of staff and passenger protection shading into health and safety – which is paramount on the railways? Sue answers that she shares staff assault information and anything else of interest to the health and safety department; and vice versa. GNER runs conflict avoidance training for all staff: “And I would say to any member of my revenue protection team, do not for the sake of a ticket get a smack in the mouth.” She gives another hypothetical example, which touches on one of the most sensitive subjects in a privatised railway – late trains. As Sue admits, there are severe financial penalties for a train not running on time [timed by the minute!] – but if staff feel a train has to be held, because the safety of staff and passengers is so at risk from an element on the train, so be it.
Anything else to speak of? Sue mentions CCTV in stations (GNER goes from King’s Cross to Inverness); and most stations have accredited-secure car parks. The rail firm is having market research done into what are passengers’ fears and perceptions of crime – perceptions and actual crime sometimes being different, she notes. “As we have just renewed our franchise, we are looking to invest whatever it takes to alleviate these fears. We don’t know if it relates to technology – help points, or CCTV on trains; or a help-line for passengers or staff can text into; or whether it is more resources, more bodies on stations, on trains; and we are certainly scoping out a plan.”
She’s been required to give presentations to company executives, union reps and staff. She sums up: “What is great about my job is that it never stands still, whether it is staff protection or revenue protection. And when we have achieved something, OK, we need to raise the bar, and yet again.”
