UK’s biggest rail firm gives 1,500 bodyworn cameras to staff as assaults rise

Britain’s biggest rail firm has announced a five-fold increase in the number of body-worn cameras available for its frontline staff in a bid to crack down on violence and abuse. GoVia Thameslink Railway is buying 1,543 of the latest, most-advanced cameras, which can capture live footage of incidents, as part of a £2.5m attempt to reduce disorder and anti-social behaviour. Body-worn cameras have been in use on the GTR network – Thameslink, Southern, Great Northern and Gatwick Express – since before 2020. The initiative, announced during Rail Safety Week, will upgrade more than 300 existing cameras and add a further 1,543 over the next two years. It follows a 23 per cent increase in verbal assaults on staff and a 10 per cent increase in physical assaults, to a total of about 600 incidents in the last year. The cameras should be able to capture better-quality footage to use in court prosecutions. The number of incidents is small in comparison with the number of passengers but GTR, which has in excess of 7,000 staff, believes many incidents go unreported. Its on-board supervisors on Southern and Gatwick Express, and rail enforcement officers who target fare dodgers, face the bulk of abuse. There were 279m passenger journeys on the GTR network in 2023/24, up 11 per cent on the previous year, according to the Office of Rail and Road. GTR has doubled the number of “Travel Safe Officers” on its network, who are deployed using data-led insight to support British Transport Police and other staff on the ground. A three-month trial between October and December on the West Coastway route – the lines west of Brighton – has seen a near 60 per cent reduction in anti-social behaviour and a 13 per cent reduction in staff assaults, according to BTP statistics. Stations such as Barnham, near Bognor Regis in West Sussex, have seen a spike in incidents and vandalism due to gang-related anti-social behaviour that reportedly include gangs of “feral teenage girls”. Samantha Facey, health, safety and security director at GTR, said: “The rise in antisocial behaviour is being felt across industries and communities nationwide. Whilst we cannot solve the problem on our own, we hope that with increased tools and resources, as well as closer working with other industry partners, we can begin to turn the dial on this kind of behaviour. “Everyone travelling with us deserves to get home safely, and our colleagues deserve to be treated with respect; physical or verbal abuse of any kind will not be tolerated. Our Antisocial Behaviour Improvement Plan not only demonstrates that we are serious about tackling this issue, but we are also seeing positive results since its launch.” Chief Superintendent Chris Casey of British Transport Police said: “We are focused on ensuring stations and trains remains a safe and pleasant environment for the travelling public and for railway staff. We will continue to work closely with our partners in the rail industry and in local communities to tackle and prevent antisocial behaviour, and prosecute those that threaten and abuse others on the railway network. “We understand how intimidating antisocial behaviour can be, and anyone who witnesses or experiences anti-social behaviour can discreetly contact our text-to-report number 61016 to report the incident without alerting anyone else.” More than 12,000 body-worn cameras are believed to be in use across the UK rail industry. Transport for London has been using body-worn cameras since 2020 and has made the devices a standard piece of kit for frontline staff. Research shows that the risk of assaults on staff can almost halve when wearing a camera.