Hannah Lindsay

Said the following about Operation Safeguard:

“The trial of Operation Safeguard was so successful in the initial 12 weeks that when the update on progress was presented to the DfT in September 2021 Operation Safeguard was extended and is continuing through to March 2023.

This comes at a time when the industry is being pushed to reduce spending, yet the DfT has granted funding to continue with Operation Safeguard and built this initiative into the new franchise agreements.

Key success criteria continue to be delivered with the following now in place –

• Refined operation of the Co-ordination suite and the Travel Safe Officer proposition to support a more agile approach, with almost 10,000 joint interventions made by the teams since July 2021

• All the original 240 front line staff identified for Managing Conflict Situations trained and a release plan agreed for a further 240 delegates, which will result in all Gate line and at-risk colleagues being trained

• Over and above the planned Operation Safeguard communications, enhanced critical safety messages aligned to known risks such as the risk of increased antisocial behaviour and potential assaults during the festive season supported through internal and external comms channels including an external partnership with a celebrity nutritionist and relevant research to highlight the risk of drinking too much and travelling on the railway. The campaign was picked up by the Metro and the Brighton & Hove Argus, as well as a leading drinks industry journal. This was supported on social media by the tipple / topple campaign created last year to reach passengers before they travel on the railway. Also, on social media is the Behind the Scenes campaign which has continued to push safety messages around safer travel through showcasing our colleagues in their roles, the REO team were featured during this time to support the narrative around being kinder to our colleagues as they are there to help

• Review of Eyewitness reporting in the Zero Harm app has been concluded and improvements being actioned to ensure that front line colleagues have the best possible way of reporting their concerns, this includes notifications so that they are also updated on what’s happened as a result of their report

• An overarching safeguarding strategy proposal drafted

• Consolidated training proposal drafted learning the lessons from the Managing Conflict Course feedback on what tools and tips our front-line teams need to keep themselves safe

• Input provided to the RDG led BWV adoption project - Policy Workstream

Operation Safeguard has continued to drive forward change at pace having been mobilised extremely quickly but driven forward under the guidance of 3 managers, supported by colleagues and industry partners. This has both shifted perceptions around how seriously we take this and what we are doing to tackle it for our colleagues as well as realise some tangible outputs, the main one being and the key testament to its success has to be the improved reporting of incidents of this nature.

Our findings suggest that with an increase in ridership, reinstatement of revenue activities and an increase in reporting of ASB, as anticipated there has been an increase in reporting of assaults.

It should however be noted that nature and type of assaults has changed (reduction in physical assaults) and delving into our data it is clear that this is true, verbal assaults have increased which is to be expected but there has been a noticeable shift in the nature of assaults away from physical assaults in particular injury assaults with a 21% reduction in injury year to date compared with pre-pandemic data in 2019/20 which we believe is a result in part to Operation Safeguard.

Most notably within period 10 (December 2021 – January 2022), of the 53 reported assaults 12 of these were physical which is a significant reduction when compared to the 20 in the last period and for the first time this year, and the first time in 21 periods, there were no injuries related to an assault.

GTR remain steadfast in our commitment to managing the risk of ASB and potential assaults to ensure the safety for our colleagues and passengers.“