Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
MR GEORGE
MUIR, MR
DAVID FRANKS,
MR IAN
DOBBS, MR
ANDREW HAINES,
MR KEITH
LUDEMAN AND
MR ROBIN
GISBY
19 APRIL 2006
Q20 Mrs Ellman: And outside of London?
Mr Muir: I would have thought
a very much smaller percentage. I cannot guess the percentage.
Q21 Mrs Ellman: Why is it that you
know the figure for London but you do not know the figure for
outside of London?
Mr Muir: Because I had a lot of
data about London. For the preparation for this report I just
had more data about London.
Mr Franks: We operate at National
Express a number of stations outside of London. Of our 488 stations
in total, 199 have CCTV, so just shy of 50%.
Mr Dobbs: We have 76% of our stations
covered by CCTV, 1,888 cameras on stations, a further 1,788 cameras
on trains, and another 1,400-odd cameras to come on trains that
are to be updated, so over 5,000 cameras.
Q22 Mrs Ellman: And your plans for
the future?
Mr Dobbs: Our franchise at the
moment is in the rebidding phase so I imagine my competitors along
here would—
Q23 Chairman: The important thing
Mrs Ellman is concerned about is that you did include the ones
actually on the trains there, did you not?
Mr Dobbs: On trains and on stations,
yes.
Q24 Chairman: So it is not quite
the same thing, is it? What are the numbers actually on the stations?
Mr Dobbs: 76% of stations have
cameras.
Q25 Mrs Ellman: And what are you
planning for the remainder?
Mr Dobbs: We have only got a few
months of the franchise left and obviously for confidentiality
reasons I am not able to say in public what our bid is going to
be. I am sure my competitors will be in exactly the same position
sitting around me, but suffice it to say we are planning to invest
further in station security and clearly it is a very important
issue for the business and for our customers.
Mr Haines: We run all the stations
in Scotland and about half of those are covered, about 188.
Chairman: I am very sorry, the Committee
stands adjourned. I would be grateful if Members would be back
in 10 minutes. I hope to rely on your speed.
The Committee was suspended from 2.59 pm to 3.10
pm for a division in the House.
Chairman: Mrs Ellman?
Q26 Mrs Ellman: Do you agree that
minimum standards should be put in place for the standard of images
on CCTV? Has anyone got any views on the proposal that there should
be minimum standards for images produced on CCTV?
Mr Muir: Yes there should and
the new Code of Practice that we have brought out indicates that
they will be when people upgrade them. What one has to appreciate
though for CCTV is that the train operators moved very quickly
into introducing CCTV before digital cameras were available, and
as a result we have got a large investment in analogue cameras.
However, the cameras we have been bringing in more recently have
been the updated digital ones. When people change cameras or put
new ones in they will be to that standard.
Q27 Mrs Ellman: How does that standard
compare with European stations?
Mr Muir: I do not know but it
is a very good quality. I have seen it, it is stunning quality.
Q28 Chairman: Does anyone else have
any ideas?
Mr Haines: I would support the
move to digital cameras as they are replaced. In fact, I think
it would be a better use of resource than 100% coverage of stations
where there are maybe only one or two passengers a day to upgrade
to digital cameras. It is a good example of where a jam spread
may not be the most effective way of getting a secure environment
for people.
Q29 Mr Leech: My follow-up question
was whether or not the extra investment is now being spent on
replacing existing camera technology rather than making up the
rest of the network that currently does not have cameras.
Mr Haines: In our case it is very
much a mix of both. We aim to get 95% of passenger journeys monitored
by CCTV. We think the increment beyond that would be prohibitively
expensive for the value and it is much better to spend the money
in upgrading existing cameras.
Q30 Mr Leech: When you say monitored
by CCTV do you mean live monitored so someone is always looking
at it, or do you mean having CCTV there so that it can be looked
at if necessary?
Mr Haines: A mix. Certainly in
the next two years the vast majority of our cameras will be monitored
24 hours a day by dedicated staff. There are some stations where
the cost of doing that is very expensive. It is typically about
£50,000 to link into a single station. If it is a very lightly
used station it may not be the best use of resource, but the majority
will be manned and supervised as opposed to just recorded.
Q31 Chairman: Mr Gisby also wanted
to say something on that.
Mr Gisby: We run the 17 largest
stations. They are obviously all covered extensively with modern
systems. The next money that we will spend will be on image recognition,
processing and the management of the information that is coming
from the cameras. I think that is where we have to go now. If
you look at the time it takes to process information and then
lead to prosecutions and convictions, the effort involved in that—and
I am sure the Chief Constable will speak to this later and I also
speak as a member of the British Transport Police Authority—that
is where the investment has to go next. Instead of chasing coverage
of 2,500 stations at 100% we should be looking at better links
between the data gathering we already have and the processing
of that subsequently. That is where we need to go next. We are
capturing an awful lot of information, not just in our industry
but links with local authorities and with communities, with the
civil as well as the Transport Police, to be 100% sure we are
making 100% use of the information that we are gathering, I think
that is where we should look next.
Q32 Mrs Ellman: What other work is
being done on using the information that is gathered?
Mr Ludeman: If I may offer an
example. Within Southern we have a control room that looks after
a good deal of the Metro stations in the network which runs from
Victoria, London Bridge, et cetera. That was an initiative
we embarked on jointly with TfL and we have 24-hour monitoring
of those stations. We look for particular patterns of behaviour
because what we are after eventually is getting a prosecution
and deterring people from committing crime on our stations. So
it is a mix of the information that you have in front of you,
the quality of the image, and the degree to which you can then
pursue a prosecution in a way that then leads on to identifying
individuals you can find on other parts of your network to try
and stop crime in the future. There is one example where we work
with TfL within a London TOC to aggressively reduce crime on the
network using the most up-to-date CCTV we have.
Q33 Chairman: Is that analogue or
digital?
Mr Ludeman: Digital.
Mr Dobbs: Just to reinforce what
Mr Ludeman was saying there, the quality of information, the quality
of image you get is very important from a prosecution point of
view. One of the things we have done in our CCTV room, which monitors
about 70-odd stations, is we have employed two full-time evidence
gatherers whose sole job it is to sift information, to extract
it, and to package it up in such a way that it is admissible in
court to prosecute people, because if you do not do that then
the system becomes just a toy.
Q34 Mrs Ellman: How far is the CCTV
system linked up with the PA systems?
Mr Dobbs: Certainly in our case
most of the stations, if not all of them, are from Wimbledon CCTV
centre link.
Q35 Mrs Ellman: Is that the same
everywhere?
Mr Ludeman: You tend to have facilities
at the larger stations that then allow you to speak to the smaller
stations in your network. We are able to speak to most of our
stations from various points within our network, a long-line PA
and we can reach most of our customers in that way.
Q36 Mr Martlew: On that very point,
recently in the Underground there has been a situation where somebody
is watching the monitor and announces this young lad has either
jumped over the gate or whatever, and it is very reassuring to
the public that somebody on the PA sees something happen and announces
it and puts a spotlight on the individual. Is that something you
are thinking of continuing or expanding?
Mr Haines: We are just in the
process this week of letting a contract for the Trans-Pennine
Express for all its stations, and that is very much an integrated
system where we will buy customer information systems at the same
time as a CCTV intelligent network.
Mr Franks: I was going to make
two quick points. One was that our own facilities within National
Express Group are being upgraded too, so we do not have just analogue
systems, wherever we can we upgrade. On c2c—that is the
route between London-Southend-Shrewburyness, for example—it
is completely digital. We are just about to build a control centre
which will be manned 24 hours a day and do the sorts of things
that have just been described. That is the way forward. The other
point I wanted to make very quickly is that I am not sure whether
the Committee has seen the guidance note that has been issued
for CCTV on stations. It is a joint guidance note between ATOC,
the British Transport Police and Network Rail and it does cover
a number of the things that have just been talked about. I have
a copy here which I am prepared to leave behind.
Chairman: That is very helpful.
Q37 Mrs Ellman: What are your policies
on staffing stations at all times while trains are running?
Mr Franks: Staffing is one approach
to tackling the problem of security for both our customers and
also our staff. We take our responsibilities at NEG very very,
seriously. We want to provide a secure environment but, as I say,
staffing is just one approach to tackling the problem. Other approaches
include mobile teams.
Q38 Mrs Ellman: Could I just stop
you there. I want to focus for the moment on staffing, so what
are you doing about staffing on stations?
Mr Franks: What we do in National
Express Group is assess the risks at each of our stations. The
evidence comes about in various forms. For example, we have crime
data which is provided by the British Transport Police. We have
comments from our staff and from our customers. We have our own
research where we talk to our customers. That forms the basis
for a risk assessment. On the basis of that assessment we then
determine the right levels of security that are to be provided
at a particular location. For a very small station where perhaps
the design of it is adequate and maybe the footfall at that station
is quite light, and it does not have a history of any crime, then
the staffing at that station would be very much dependent upon
the commercial needs. At other stations, say where the crime rates
are particularly high—and I can give you a very good example
on Silverlink Metro which will become the new North London franchise—all
of the stations where the crime levels are relatively significant
are actually staffed from the start of service to the close of
service. Where the crime rates are lower different approaches
are taken.
Mr Dobbs: It is very difficult
to add very much to what Mr Franks has said. He has summarised
what all train operating companies do and that is about assessing
the risk.
Q39 Chairman: I think
we are going to have to ask all of you for rather more precise
information on some of this. Mr Muir, we would like the exact
figures on some of the numbers of stations that are covered and
how many of them.
Mr Muir: I have the figures for
London but I do not have them with me.
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