Select Committee on Transport Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-139)

CHIEF CONSTABLE IAN JOHNSTON CBE QM BSC (HONS), MR LEN PORTER, MR COLIN FOXALL AND MS CHRISTINE KNIGHTS

19 APRIL 2006

  Q120  Chairman: Mr Porter, what are your views on this?

  Mr Porter: I think the last time I appeared at one of these Committees you were concerned about the cost of standards, so I certainly could not propose standards in this area. I think the rail industry—

  Q121  Chairman: I am rarely accused by anyone of being concerned about costs but I am happy to hear it.

  Mr Porter: I think the rail industry has grown more knowledgeable about risk. The way that we police this ought to be according to risk.

  Q122  Chairman: That does rather lean towards flexibility.

  Mr Porter: I would agree with that.

  Q123  Chairman: Chief Constable, I am going to come back to you because I am not now clear what it is that is being proposed. Are we saying that we should have a very straightforward set of minimum standards but over and above those minimum standards there should be some flexibility for individual stations to put in bits that they like?

  Chief Constable Johnston: I would go for a gold, silver, bronze approach which would be mandatory through the franchising arrangements which would be set at different thresholds, so small stations with low footfall, low crime levels, meet one standard, those with more crime, more people would meet another standard and the bigger ones where there is most crime would be required to meet the higher standard. I would want some system which had flexibility and some system which targeted—which the gold, silver, bronze thing would do—the places at which it was most needed because at the moment requirements within franchises are often specified in terms of "You must have X number of secure stations" and they quite intelligently go for the ones that cost least.

  Q124  Mrs Ellman: There seems to be a discrepancy here between where need is greatest as identified by high crime and where people feel there is a need because they are uneasy. Who should decide which of those areas has higher priority in terms of action needed?

  Mr Foxall: I think the answer to that is that is why we think we should have a strategy which tries to address precisely that sort of question. At the bigger stations it is fairly plain that you can make decisions about what you need to do and maybe Network Rail can help do that without too much difficulty. When we get further down—I hesitate to say "down the line"—to the smaller stations it then becomes very difficult to say what is necessary and what I would like to see happen there is to encourage the local community to become involved in making decisions about local stations and how they should be protected.

  Mr Porter: I do not think it is a question of who should decide, it is a question of what the data and information tells you as to where the priority risk is and then it is absolutely clear without anybody taking a view as to where work should be done.

  Q125  Chairman: To be devil's advocate for a moment, Mr Porter, are you not really saying that is if, for example, the information gathered by CCTV is on digital, if there is someone monitoring it, if there is some means of filtering that information? Are there not a lot of ifs in that statement?

  Mr Porter: I do not think it is anything to do with CCTV.

  Q126  Chairman: No, but it is the quality of the information. Where do you gather the information from if it is a small station with no staff and it has not got CCTV that anybody can decipher? I am sorry to be boring about this but you have got to know what the information is before you sort it out, have you not? It is no use looking at the Chief Constable, I know his views but I want your views.

  Mr Porter: We have information in the various databases that would describe where the incidents are taking place, that was why I was looking at the Chief Constable because he has the database.

  Q127  Chairman: So you could draw us a nice coloured map of the whole of the railway system of the United Kingdom suitably graded as to the level of crime in each individual area?

  Mr Porter: Can we?

  Chief Constable Johnston: We certainly can. There is crime data for each station.

  Q128  Chairman: What do you do with what information, Chief Constable? You tell the train operating companies and what do they do with it, if the answer is not a lemon?

  Chief Constable Johnston: Some respond responsibly and effectively on occasions and others are unable to do so.

  Q129  Chairman: Are unable or unwilling or do not intend to cough up the cash?

  Chief Constable Johnston: I think resources are a key issue.

  Chairman: I suspect they might be.

  Q130  Mrs Ellman: Would you say the Secure Stations Scheme is successful?

  Chief Constable Johnston: I would say they are part of the successful formula. There are other things to improving the lives of passengers on stations than just the Secure Stations Scheme but it is a big step in the right direction and I am very supportive of it.

  Mr Porter: I would agree with that.

  Mr Foxall: From our point of view we see it being much more applicable to the larger stations and difficult to apply to the smaller stations. Commenting on the earlier discussion, we have talked about identifying needs but that ignores one very important thing and that is passengers' perception. If passengers are fearful of going into stations it does not matter whether there has or has not been a problem on that station, it is a question of whether they perceive it to be an environment where there might be a problem. Somehow we have to take that into account, which is why I think we need a wider discussion about this. It is not just a statistical bean counting exercise, it is an exercise about what the passengers think and what will make them secure in travelling.

  Q131  Mrs Ellman: Why do you think there are only 323 secure stations registered under the scheme from over 2,500 stations?

  Mr Porter: Cost.

  Q132  Mrs Ellman: Cost of?

  Chief Constable Johnston: I think the scheme could be made easier and more flexible, which is why I would quite like a gold, silver, bronze approach. That is part of it. I think they see it as more difficult to achieve than it would be. There is an issue of cost in this as well. One of the things the scheme does is survey passengers so you do pick up on passengers' feelings and fear of crime through the present Secure Stations Scheme.

  Q133  Mr Leech: I am interested to know whether there is any difference between the levels of fear of crime in stations where they have the Secure Stations Scheme in place and whether people are aware that those stations do have that scheme.

  Ms Knights: One of our concerns is that passengers are not particularly aware, nor is it particularly publicised, whether a station has accreditation under the Secure Stations Scheme or not. Clearly there is a balance to be struck as to whether to reassure people or to engender more fear, but there has been research on the Secure Car Parks Scheme and when people found out about that it seemed to reassure them. Surely there is work to be done on looking at reassuring people through further publicity on the Secure Stations Scheme.

  Q134  Mr Wilshire: Somebody said, and this concerns me, if this is what people "perceive" to be a safe environment. Can any of you see any danger in trying to reassure people beyond the point that you can actually deliver and, therefore, make them less aware of their surroundings and less responsible for their own safety?

  Chief Constable Johnston: I think you can do things to make people feel safer by the way the environment is constructed. Places that are dark and dirty do not give people a sense of reassurance and comfort and you can do something about that regardless of the actual crime levels that are there. Paradoxically, places where there are no people around are quite frightening for some people and having people around, whoever those people are, in a way helps people to feel safer. The issue of fear of crime is very much a separate issue from crime itself. The people who are worried about crime are by and large the elderly and people who are victims are the young. The people who are worried about it are women, men are much more often victims of crime. People are worried about crime at night, most of the crime is during the day. People on the railways are worried about crime most on trains but mostly crime occurs on the platforms, on the stations. There are two challenges to be addressed around crime and fear of crime and they require different strategies.

  Q135  Mrs Ellman: Should accreditation only be given to stations which are deemed to be at risk?

  Chief Constable Johnston: I think that would be a very sensible use of resources. You are into an issue about how do you define to what extent they are at risk but that is exactly the point I am saying, at the moment sometimes secure stations are places which have accreditation and that investment could have been more usefully spent somewhere else.

  Mr Foxall: I think that is problematic, Chairman. I do not like disagreeing with the Chief Constable but I think that is problematic because I still think the perceptions people have influence travel. I accept there is a boundary that you cannot go beyond. You cannot go to ridiculous lengths to make people feel absolutely comfortable because if they innately fear, they innately fear, but I am worried about saying you do it simply on a risk assessment basis or on the basis of experience.

  Chief Constable Johnston: My point around risk was I was including fear of crime as one of the elements within the risk assessment.

  Mr Foxall: Then we are in agreement.

  Q136  Mr Scott: We have heard about the CCTV on station platforms. In a number of areas the town centres are already monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For economy reasons, as the staff are already there monitoring them, would you recommend it as a way forward for all stations to be linked to town centres?

  Chief Constable Johnston: I think there is a challenge nationally across all organisations about the integration of CCTV systems for police forces, for local authorities, for football grounds. There is a whole series of work to be done here. The Home Office, God bless them, have commissioned some work and are due to report at the end of this year which will be about achieving a working towards common standards to enable exactly that process to take place. Whilst that is going on there is lots of work that can be done. Lewisham, for example, has got cameras from the station into their borough control room and there are other places around London that I know of where that currently happens. There is scope for a lot more of that work which would be very good operationally in terms of tying up events because often the people who are misbehaving on the stations turn out to be the people who misbehave in the towns, so there are some operational links there, and there is some resource saving in terms of who is sitting in front of these cameras watching them.

  Mr Porter: I think that we should see rail personal security as part of a community safety initiative, which is the point you are making. Just backing up the Chief Constable's point, if we do a very good job on the railway, and I think that is happening, all that is going to do is push people out into the car park first and then into the community centre or into the shopping centre or whatever and there is no point spending the money to move them from A to B, we need to take a rather more holistic view.

  Q137  Mr Scott: I wonder if I could ask Mr Foxall and Ms Knights if you agree that this would help with the feel or the perception that people fear, which we heard is wrong?

  Mr Foxall: I think it would be good. In fact, I agree with the last point that Mr Porter has just made. If you make the station tremendously secure and if the four streets outside the station are terribly insecure you have created another sort of problem unless you are always going to guarantee someone comes to the station in a car or whatever. It does need to proceed in that context. We must not ignore the fact that crime on the railways is part of society's crime. We cannot isolate it. Yes, clearly it is a specialist area and we have to treat it in a particular way but it is part of society's crime and that is why I believe the local community has to get involved too in looking at the issues that are raised in the stations. You cannot shut the station in a box.

  Ms Knights: This goes back to Mr Foxall's point at the beginning that it is about a partnership to try to resolve these issues where different bodies, local authorities, BTP, RSSB and the train companies and Network Rail, all need to work together, but there does need to be one controlling body or one controlling mind having an overview to make sure there is a catalyst for action in each area.

  Chief Constable Johnston: I would very much want to see stations positioned much more in the heart of local communities because that is a way into resources, you can get town centre wardens engaged and interested in stations, local shopkeepers, develop Neighbourhood Watch capability. If we were able to develop more ownership of the railway stations within local communities we could bring in resources, bring in community support and get lots of help alongside the CCTV.

  Mr Porter: I fully agree with that because if—

  Chairman: Mr Porter, forgive me. If you agree I am going to move on.

  Q138  Mr Martlew: Listening to yourselves and the previous witnesses, is station security a success story, is it getting better, or do I believe what I read in the papers?

  Chief Constable Johnston: I think it is a mixed bag. In some places there have been big improvements and some places are pretty grim and people are quite right to be anxious about spending time there. I do think there are lots of good initiatives going on so the situation overall is getting better. As a police force we have had better support in the last year or so to enable us to make a contribution to it. Developments in CCTV are very positive although I do share Robin Gisby's comments about more investment needed in the monitoring and use end of the business to get the full investment returns out of it. The front end is not quite done but enough has gone into it, it is more in the back end and how we utilise the materials like CCTV and the like. I think the picture is improving. Crime was down last year, it was down the year before on the railways by small percentages but it is a step in the right direction. I do think overall that we are going in the right direction but not fast enough.

  Q139  Mr Martlew: Chief Constable, earlier you indicated that you needed legislation and then you appeared to contradict yourself to the extent that you said you could put it in through the franchise. Politicians know the idea that you are going to get legislation quickly is very unlikely. What would you say?

  Chief Constable Johnston: I was clumsy with my language there. I regard the franchise as a regulatory requirement when I was talking about a legal basis for it. There needs to be a regulatory requirement which is mandatory and not an opt-in and opt-out basis.


 
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