The RailStaff Awards 2024

Nominations for Station Staff Award

Simone Carter

Said the following about Samantha Lavender:

“Samantha works at Droitwich Spa, which is not one of the easiest stations to work at as sadly we do see lots of incidents of anti-social behaviours occurring at the station, ranging from drunken behaviour, abuse, and ticketless travel and drug offences.

This past year alone Samantha's quick thinking actions in stopping a train helped save a gentleman who sadly whilst suffering an epileptic fit fell head first onto the track suffering life changing injuries. Seeing a train was approaching Samantha calmly contacted the signaller and the train was stopped in time.

Samantha works tirelessly to report all incidents and keeps a detailed log of everything that happens at the station, this helps profile the station and build a picture of day to day life and incidents of anti-social behaviours at the station in order to help eradicate these behaviours and make the station a better place for all to use as Samantha does care deeply for her station and for her customers

Samantha has worked with local police and BTP to help to try and make Droitwich a better station.

The station is always kept 100% up to date with information and Samantha has built up a great relationship with locals from the surrounding community

Samantha recently met with Inspector Rachel Crump from the Safer Travel Policing Team at Droitwich Spa, where she was presented with two awards.

One award was from West Midlands Police and Superintendent Gareth Morris.

Samantha’s second award was for Star Of The Month from West Midlands Safer Travel Partnership, Inspector Crump when presenting this award to Samantha, had explained to her that all of Samantha’s previous endeavours towards keeping Droitwich Spa station safe had been taken into account and not just the incident below which Superintendent Gareth Morris had kindly written.

“As I approached, who I now know to be Sam, in her visible station attire, I saw she was attending to a man slumped in the shelter on the platform. I identified myself as a police officer to see if I could help. Sam was on the phone to an ambulance and I started to engage with the male. He was extremely drunk, appeared to have fallen and suffered a contusion on his forehead and had both vomited and become incontinent. He was hard to engage with and over time began to become a little argumentative. Sam supported me and also obtained nitrile gloves and sanitiser for us both.

Whilst we awaited the ambulance, yet another drunk male appeared on the other platform. He appeared to be drinking from a large container of alcohol hand sanitiser. He kept hovering close to the tracks in an extremely irresponsible and dangerous manner. He was unsteady on his feet and then began to approach and harass other members of the public. Sam endeavoured to engage with the second male to keep him from posing a risk to himself and others, whilst still supporting me with the first male. She notified approaching trains to come under caution given how he kept returning to the platform edge and leaning over.

Between Sam and I we managed to contact West Mercia Police who thankfully responded rapidly and arrested the second individual before a nasty accident could likely occur. Sometime later an Ambulance arrived for our first male. He began to become more argumentative and Sam stepped in with comms to assist when he refused to leave the platform shelter. Thankfully he eventually agreed to medical aid.

Sam was simply superb, compassionate, communicative and calm amongst competing and concurrent challenges. She even put measures in place to shield the first male from public view as trains pulled in. She constantly checked in with me and communicated with the ambulance service, in addition to managing the safety of the station and patrons”.

Samantha is a true Ambassador and an absolute credit to the station“