Select Committee on Transport Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)

MR GEORGE MUIR, MR DAVID FRANKS, MR IAN DOBBS, MR ANDREW HAINES, MR KEITH LUDEMAN AND MR ROBIN GISBY

19 APRIL 2006

  Q40  Chairman: As an Association I am sure you have members outside of London, Mr Muir?

  Mr Muir: Yes.

  Mr Ludeman: Would it be helpful, Chairman, if I gave an example of one of my train companies as to which stations are manned and which ones are not?

  Q41  Chairman: Yes, we would like that.

  Mr Ludeman: Within Southern in the Metro area, we have 58 stations and 52 of those are fully staffed Monday to Friday. When you dip down to Saturday 46 are manned and Sunday 35 are manned. That is reflecting the various levels of activity at those stations on those days. Re-emphasising what Mr Franks said, we look at how we allocate people to serve those stations, not necessarily locating them permanently at those stations—they might move around in a peripatetic way, they might be a security person or a ticket person. It depends on the commercial requirements at that station at that time. You will see from that very quick analysis that the majority of stations are manned for most of the traffic day. It is only on Sundays when less are manned but the majority of them are.

  Q42  Mrs Ellman: Do any of you know how much would it cost to staff your stations at all times trains are running?

  Mr Ludeman: Yes.

  Q43  Chairman: Not this afternoon, but would you be prepared to do us a detailed note?

  Mr Ludeman: We have researched the numbers so if you take the country as a whole you are looking at about £25 million in the London area if every station was manned.

  Q44  Chairman: But that is everybody, not just you?

  Mr Ludeman: That is all the London operators within the London area.

  Q45  Chairman: We would welcome a short supplementary note from all of you. Those with large stations I am sure will give large submissions.

  Mr Gisby: We are all manned 100% so I do not think I need to give you anything further.

  Mr Dobbs: I think one thing that we should stress is that we do put a lot of credence on having flexible staffing in these areas, so that rather than having one person in one place at one time, which can be difficult, we move people around and we have specially trained groups of staff, whether they be TravelSafe officers or Transport Police obviously as well, going round providing a visible presence on stations as required, which is risk based.

  Q46  Mrs Ellman: Could you give us the reasons why the CCTV you have got is not fully monitored? What is the reason for that?

  Mr Muir: When it was introduced it was impractical because it was originally analogue and it was extremely difficult to get the images from the stations up to a central office. The first people to do a live monitor were in fact in Scotland in about 1999. I remember them introducing the first live monitoring of trains to very, very good effect. It is now being live monitored because now it is practical because of digital technology.

  Q47  Mrs Ellman: Any other explanations?

  Mr Ludeman: I suppose if you consider the amount of potential images that you would have to be looking at, we are not just talking about stations, we are talking about on our trains as well. In one of my franchises we have 1,054 rail vehicles and in the other one we have 1,313. That is an awful lot of images to look at.

  Q48  Chairman: I am very interested in this. Who looks at the stuff? Is it digital on the rolling stock, in the carriages?

  Mr Ludeman: What we do is follow up incidents so when we know there has been an incident we will go back and look at the evidence.

  Q49  Chairman: So somebody has to create a bit of a fuss before anyone takes any notice of what is coming through? When it is on a carriage where is the point at which that material is monitored and checked?

  Mr Ludeman: We have all that information in the depots that we operate and we do review that information. We are only looking at incidents because of the sheer volume of the material.

  Q50  Chairman: You have made that point. We are perfectly prepared to accept that, but you have made a very sensible point about the numbers of CCTVs there are on your carriages as well as at your stations. What I am saying to you is where are those images going and how often are they monitored? Are you telling us that they will only be monitored if what is described as an incident comes up?

  Mr Ludeman: If it is trains it is the depots.

  Q51  Chairman: Are they monitored in the depots so that someone 24 hours a day is checking the stuff coming into the depots?

  Mr Ludeman: No, they look at specific incidents.

  Q52  Chairman: How do they know there is an incident if they are not actually looking at the screens?

  Mr Ludeman: Because it is reported.

  Q53  Chairman: So you have to wait for the train staff to tell you "we had a problem on the Liverpool line" before you realise—

  Mr Ludeman: You have to wait for the train to get back into the depot.

  Mr Martlew: So it is not live transmission to the depot.

  Q54  Chairman: So it is not live transmission, it is a recording and someone has to draw your attention to a particular incident?

  Mr Ludeman: Our staff or the individuals involved in the incident will make a report. We gather the report and we will check back.

  Q55  Chairman: And how often have you prosecuted from that evidence in the last 12 months?

  Mr Ludeman: We do not of course make the prosecution.

  Q56  Chairman: How often have you brought in the BTP and asked for action on something?

  Mr Ludeman: I do not have the figures immediately to hand.

  Q57  Mr Scott: A couple of points. From what you are saying it is mainly reactive rather than proactive. You are looking after someone has reported an event rather than trying to immediately notify the authorities of that?

  Mr Haines: I think there is a big distinction there between trains and stations.

  Q58  Chairman: Not if they are not monitored, Mr Haines.

  Mr Haines: The distinction I am trying to draw is that of the 188 stations we have got, 98% of the footfall is continuously monitored, but we do not do that on the trains. There is no continuous monitoring of every single vehicle on every single train. For that we wait for an incident but at the stations 98% of passenger movements are continuously monitored.

  Q59  Mr Scott: On a number of the stations you have town centre CCTV which is monitored 24 hours, seven days a week. Has it been looked at plugging into that so you would not have the additional staff costs that you mentioned earlier? How many have looked into that?

  Mr Franks: You make a very good point. There are examples where that is happening, where we are linking our stations into town centre schemes. There is a lot more that should be done.

  Mr Dobbs: We have a couple of schemes in South West Trains again which are linked to the local councils. Again, to reinforce what Mr Franks said, we will do more in the future. It is a partnership that we need to take forward.


 
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