The RailStaff Awards 2024

Sally Ralston

Said the following about Phil Saunders:

“He is constantly engaged with the Safety Dept in order to try and reduce accidents and incidents within customer services to both passengers and staff. He challenges poor or incomplete information and ensures that the responsible manager for the area is kept up to date on actions and recommendations that arise from meetings and discussions. He was instrumental in pulling together our involvement in RSSB deep dive initiative which is aimed at analysing near misses regarding platform train interface and he has designed briefing documents for our staff which RSSB have used as best practice for other TOC’s taking part in the trial.

He is passionate about what he does and is always willing to try new initiatives and ideas which will improve safety. Phil was instrumental in the initiative to install defibrillators at our stations. Merseyrail won the Gold Award – Cardiac Smart from the North West Ambulance Service as a result of this initiative and there are recent examples of when the defibrillators have be used.

Phil has a real passion and realistic approach for balancing both safety and customer experience. A good example of this would be his work with safety and MFRS for litter bins to be installed back at our underground stations.“