Project Name: Govia Thameslink Railway Ltd – Travel Safety Officers (TSO)
Start Date: 04/07/2023
End Date: 04/07/2025
We have recently commenced with a contract of providing Travel Safe Officers for Govia Thameslink Railway Limited (GTR). GTR encompasses the routes operated by Gatwick Express, Great Northern, Southern and Thameslink, connecting key destinations from King’s Lynn, Bedford, and Peterborough to central London and onto Gatwick, Croydon, Eastbourne, and Brighton in the south. GTR is the largest train operating company in the UK, with over 273 million passenger journeys per year, representing over 24% of all UK passenger train services.
We provide 40 SIA Licenced Travel Safety Officers per day on a static and mobile basis in 10 different key areas including Brighton, Eastbourne, Worthing, East Croydon, Luton, Stevenage, Finsbury Park, St Albans, Boreham Wood and called as a response to different hotspots throughout the GTR network to combat anti–social behaviour. We also support GTR with trespass, fare evasion and suicidal incidents, while providing excellent customer service and a high visibility presence to provide greater customer and GTR staff confidence. See below for our cluster maps.
As per this contract we are to provide additional staff at short notice due to any key events. On the first weekend of commencing this contract we were tasked with an additional request to assist with the security provisions for Wireless Festival at Finsbury Park. Not only were the teams at Finsbury Park on hand to assist with over 100,000 attending the festival the rail network was also dealing with limited services due to overtime strikes. Our Travel Safe Officers main role was to keep everyone safe by consistent observing and keeping the flow of travellers moving through the station. As this was our first weekend on the contract we worked closely with the British Transport Police, GTR staff and Met Police to support the dealing of any incidents which has helped our officers learn the best way on dealing with certain issues and a large flow of passengers.
Our officers on this project are highly trained in Customer Service and have excellent English language skills with a visible presence to be able to deter potential incidents and provide reassurance to customers using the service. A key role to this contract is building strong relationships with the station staff, REOS and BTP by having regular meetings, communicating any intelligence observed and working collaboratively.
Please see below feedback provided from one of the Station Managers for Govia:
“I just wanted to pass on that, following the first couple of weeks of the new TSOs being in place, I have had a lot of really good feedback about them, from station staff, train staff and passengers. It has been noticed that they have been very proactive and are dealing, in an appropriate way, with all sorts of issues and incidents that happen. They are also feeding back to me anything I need to know. It has been very beneficial already having them here and wanted to pass on my thanks.”
Station Manager, Govia