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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