The Labour Government is already making its priorities felt – in crime prevention, above all VAWG (violence against women and girls). On the railways, if the Government also wants to get the best value for money out of British Transport Police (BTP), and any private security, it might want to make another priority, Mark Rowe writes.
In a report to the British Transport Police Authority in York last month, BTP chief constable Lucy D’Orsi made plain where politicians see her priorities. She told the Authority that she has had ‘several Ministerial meetings to discuss BTP and Government priorities’. On November 4 she met Lord Hendy, Minister for Rail, ‘where we covered our approach to supporting the railway in reducing disruption and more general policing performance’. She met Jess Phillips, the Home Office minister for Safeguarding and VAWG, in October. On November 25, more publicly, she ‘attended a roundtable chaired by the Prime Minister to discuss Violence Against Women and Girls and the new spiking legislation’. She told the Authority: “It was a great opportunity to speak about what we are doing/planning – and to make any asks of government. CCTV was an area of focus. You may recall that we are working with DfT to present a proposal to the treasury next Spring that would connect CCTV from the most used national stations to a cloud based system, thus levelling up CCTV capabilities across the rail network nationally.”
While not to dispute the value of work to prevent, and detect, crimes against passengers such as robbery, theft of luggage, and even recently-defined offences such as up-skirting, and the need for kit to enable video evidence, the BTP is unusual in that it’s paid for by train operators. While naturally operators want a safe railway in its widest sense – one that people feel happy to pay to use – operators also want to keep their trains moving; and that’s affected above all by suicides on the line, vandals, cable thieves, and trespassers generally.
And the report to the Authority stated that the ‘total number of Primary Minutes Delay due to Trespass Incidents has seen a total on 172,266’, or an increase against 2023-24 of 26 per cent. D’Orsi reported that she met with the Chief Executive of RDG (Rail Delivery Group), Jacqueline Starr. Its members are train operators. Their discussion: ‘BTP’s approach to disruption and trespass’. RDG noted progress on ‘various fronts’, D’Orsi went on; ‘including work on football-related violence, reduction of volume crime, VAWG, and engagement with RDG and NWR [Network Rail, the body that looks after the tracks and other infrastructure] around trespass’.
To boil offences down in crude economic terms takes no account of the suffering of a victim of Saturday night drunk football fan aggression, or sexual harassment – the nervousness about using the same mode of transport or route (which does have an economic effect if a victim of crime stays in rather than goes out and is economically active), the loss of trust in others. Nor is the economic loss of a stolen phone or laptop bag simply the cost of getting a new one – while someone is having to source a new product, they can’t do their job. However, it takes a lot of thefts to add up to the cost of a November 2 ‘complex incident’ (in the words of BTP), ‘involving a person in a precarious position at Levenshulme’, in Manchester. A single trespasser, as D’Orsi noted, ‘caused significant disruption as officers worked alongside Home Office colleagues and Network Rail’. Significant enough that Andrew Haines, Chief Executive Officer of Network Rail, wrote to D’Orsi afterwards, ‘expressing his significant concern’. And no wonder; the incident cost Network Rail £1.7m. As she added, not only do blockages on rail lines ‘impact passengers’ confidence in the railway’ (once a trespasser is reported, trains cannot go forward until a line is declared clear, for safety reasons), ‘but also cost significant amount of money in schedule 8 payments’. To explain briefly, that’s the regime whereby if Network Rail as manager of the track has to hold up trains, the operators can claim compensation.
A separate report to the Authority pointed out that a theme of the Autumn Budget 2024 was ‘driving public sector efficiencies, increasing productivity and reducing wasteful spending’. The Budget set ‘a two per cent productivity, efficiencies and savings target for government departments’, including the railways. Yet we can say that the railways can hardly become any more efficient while trespass is rising.
A prompt response to trespass (and vandalism) implies officers and bases in localities. However, the background as for county-based police forces is that BTP is looking at closing some of its offices based at rail stations, such as Carlisle – pictured – and Lancaster (which as the rail union TSSA pointed out last month, would mean no BTP station between Preston and Scotland). How to square this?
By recourse to private security, surely. D’Orsi has already made public her readiness to draw on the private sector, from speaking at a gathering in London arranged by the contractor Mitie a year ago (the FM firm’s logo is a common sight at major stations), and featured in the April issue of Professional Security Magazine.
