Safeguarding communities
Northern Trains is a train operating company (TOC) that primarily services Yorkshire and the north of England, in addition to the Midlands. It currently calls at 474 stations and has a fleet size of 345 trains.
Amulet has worked with Northern Trains since April 2022. This case study details a specific part of our partnership in the last 12 months – safeguarding.
The challenge of safeguarding
Safety is an ongoing issue for all TOCs in and around train stations across the UK. From low level crime to greater emergency situations, Amulet’s work with Northern Trains is transforming safeguarding practices to ensure the safety of passengers and staff alike.
Railway stations saw 990 million passenger rail journeys between 2021- 2022, an increase of 155.2 per cent from the previous year. Unsurprisingly, an increase in journeys leads to a greater challenge in ensuring the safety of all passengers. The development of Travel Safe Officer (TSO) roles has been vital in preventing and effectively responding to these issues.
Improving risk prevention on the Northern Trains rail network
A Travel Safe Officer’s core responsibility is to safeguard the travelling public who use the Northern Trains network, as well as the TOC’s staff and those working in and around stations.
TSOs have multiple accreditations, including certification from the Railway Safety Accreditation Scheme (RSAS) managed by the British Transport Police (BTP) which sees all officers subject to specific police vetting and trained in accordance with the scheme. This important baseline ensures that officers can tackle low level crime and antisocial behaviour, improve intelligence, and maximise public confidence with additional powers granted by the Chief Constable of the BTP.
Additionally, TSOs are safeguarding’s ‘Champions’ under Northern Trains’ safeguarding accreditation, the company being the first TOC in the north to achieve this status. Amulet officers also serve as representatives at safeguarding action groups alongside the BTP and Northern Trains, and continue to attend events to raise awareness around child exploitation alongside the Railway Children organisation.
For their day-to-day roles, TSOs partake in joint patrols alongside police in all parts of the Northern Trains network to create a safer and more secure environment for rail users while actively planning numerous high risk operations across the network in a bid to deter anti-social behaviour and create public reassurance.
Safeguarding Partnerships
TSO roles are challenging, but officers readily go the extra mile, not least in how they commit to supporting some of the most vulnerable people in society when they are not obligated to do so.
Amulet TSOs are actively working with multiple charities including Foundation 92, the Railway Children and Shelter. Foundation 92 focuses on supporting life improvement through sport and education, emphasising both physical and mental wellbeing.
TSOs also continue to support individuals who are rough sleeping in and around city centre locations in an attempt to aid those who have fallen on hard times. This involves officers actively making referrals through Shelter and signposting them to relevant charities and organisations.
Our TSOs were hand selected to participate in a Violence Against Women campaign in partnership with Cambridge University. As part of the first
of its kind experiment, officers have increased patrols in historic hotspots for such behaviour in a bid to tackle the issue of violence against women and unwanted sexual behaviour. The campaign has required a change in deployment strategy with the data being regularly assessed and collated to share with Professor Barak Ariel.
Northern Trains supports these activities, often identified and led by TSOs themselves. This pride in their work has led to further community outreach efforts. At Cross Gates, for example, officers stepped in when there was a lack of volunteers to assist in building flower beds to improve the station’s image. TSOs have also visited local schools to provide education and raise awareness of railways and continue to work on education material centre around railway safety in a bid to build relationships with young rail users and improve the travel experience for all involved.
Success by safeguarding with technology
Bringing together people and technology is a vital way to ensure the longevity of TSOs’ success. Amulet TSOs have been heavily praised due to their approach towards evidence gathering to achieve best practice and have worked alongside the HALO bodycam team in order to configure their devices in order to maximise results.
TSOs working in tandem with this technology allowed for 6,800 byelaw offenses to be reported last year. These included smoking, loitering and trespassing, and more serious crimes including criminal damage and public disorder. This is shared with the Northern Trains prosecution department and the BTP in order to aid prosecution and conviction for those continuing to commit offences and disrupt others using the network.
Indeed, in the 12 months since Amulet TSOs have been deployed for Northern Trains, they have assisted 279 vulnerable people, prevented 33 suicides, and safeguarded in 139 interactions that include both adults and minors.
Additionally, they have attended 153 medical emergencies, ranging from slips and falls to seizures, strokes and heart attacks. Life-saving CPR has been administered on a number of occasions.
TSO value will be seen across the UK
TSOs are viewed as equals among police and TOC staff – a valued and welcome presence which is giving the community confidence in their use of rail services. Indeed, one senior figure at the BTP commented that this was “the best example of security outsourcing they had seen in the UK”.
These officers also work as an approachable and calming presence, securing the trust of the public by providing essential security services with a human touch. Soft skills underpin Amulet’s approach to recruiting and inducting TSOs. Security skills can be taught, but intuitive warmth and care cannot. Staff with the right soft skills can gain the trust of everyone they interact with, be they passengers, the police, or rail staff.
This approach has had a strong impact. In the past 12 months, there have been 48 occasions where members of the public and Northern Trains staff have gone out of their way to formally report positive feedback and praise towards TSOs. This allows us to consistently reward and recognise the fantastic group of TSOs that operate within the Northern Trains team.
This work is transferrable to other regional rail networks and TOCs, both in a structural management and supervision sense, and in how TSOs are trained and deployed. Northern Trains is already working in a Regional Operating Centre and is sharing the best practices, while another major TOC has visited to learn how to enhance its own operating model.
TSOs ensure profit too, by helping Northern Trains’ services run on time and with minimal disruption, which reduces statutory fines for late services. By increasing TOC profitability, companies can invest in their network, deliver better value for the public, and increase their positive impact on local communities.
Looking ahead
Amulet’s future ambitions for TSOs is to evolve and enhance their contributions to communities throughout the UK. Our innovative platform Project Blueprint, which is exclusive to Amulet, is the way forward. Pairing TSOs’ empathetic, specialist training with this innovative real-time situational awareness software will maximise their abilities and dedication for the betterment of the rail services and the society they serve.
Stretching beyond Northern Trains, a collaboration with Network Rail and the wider industry is currently in the works. This project hopes to give control of TSOs to the Regional Operating Centre in the north of England.
This will greatly increase the scope of officers to drive improvements in safety, reduce disruption, facilitate significant cost savings, and boost community confidence in the region’s rail service. Project Blueprint would be a key part of this thanks to the unrivalled intelligence it provides to all stakeholders in real-time.
This development would be hugely significant. Opening up this TSO resource at a regional level in the north of England indicates Northern Trains’ confidence in Amulet’s ability to deliver on a larger scale for other TOCs, the BTP, Network Rail, rail users and their communities. This move would break down silos, share capabilities and leverage joint assets – a collaborative approach that has the potential to unlock huge advantages.
Finally, if you want to get a first-hand look at what a TSO role entails, check out our video ‘A day in the life of a TSO’, as we follow two Amulet TSOs for the day.
“TSOs are integral in safeguarding our day-to-day operations. Their many successes over the past year evidence this, and we are proud to have partnered with Amulet to deploy their skills across our services. With their dedication to local communities and outreach projects, as well as their thorough training in emergency situations, they have led to TSOs greatly enhancing Northern Trains’ commitments to our customers and wider staff framework.“
John Langton, Community Safety Manager, Northern Trains
