Community safety
Our dedicated community safety team seeks to improve safety for all
railway users and reduce crime on the railway. The team works in
communities nationwide, primarily targetting ‘hotspot’ areas which
represent the greatest risk to railway users and to the infrastructure.
We try to uncover the reasons for railway crime by working with
different organisations in the local community.
Our award winning
No Messin’! campaign gives young people the opportunity to try new
activities – a better way of spending their time than playing on the
railway. In 2009/10 our approach to No Messin’! has focused on
supporting longer-term community projects to form bonds with the
community and stop railway crime before it starts.
We support restorative justice programmes and community payback
schemes, working with youth offending teams and the Probation Service
to target our message to people who are at risk of, or are already
offending.
Level crossing safety
There are approximately 9,000 level
crossings in the UK, of which we manage 6,592 active, open crossings.
The other level crossings are a mixture of crossings that are on a
non-operational part of the railway, temporarily closed, or unused
because they have become redundant. Level crossings pose the single
biggest risk of a catastrophic incident occurring on the railway. We
work to reduce incidents of misuse at level crossings through our
national awareness campaign ‘Don’t Run The Risk’ (hard-hitting adverts
on prime-time national television, radio and national and local press)
and our national level crossing closure programme.
Locally, we work
with the British Transport Police, local councils, local police forces
and community groups to attend high profile level crossings and ask
users ‘Would it Kill you to Wait?’. In 2009/10 we held 111 level
crossing safety events across Britain.
In 2009/10, we committed £10m to our national level crossing closure
programme which is targeted at closing user-operated level crossings.
These pose a higher risk than other crossings. So far, we have
agreements in place to close 391 user-operated crossings.
Preventing suicide on the railway
Sadly, suicides continue to occur on the rail network with over 200
reported incidents in the past year. In January 2010, we announced a
groundbreaking five-year partnership with The Samaritans to develop a
national programme which aims to reduce the frequency of suicides on
the railway, as well as supporting staff and passengers who are
involved.
We are working with The Samaritans to:
- make sure The Samaritans helpline number is at key locations for this type of incident
- train front-line staff how to identify potential suicides and how to intervene appropriately
- provide an enhanced response service via local offices of The Samaritans when a suicide has occurred
- work with the media to encourage responsible reporting of suicides to discourage copycat incidents.
The aim of this partnership is to reduce suicides on the railway by 20 per cent by 2015.