Transport Committee personal security investigation

Following a London Assembly Transport Committee investigation, the Committee has written to the Mayor of London with recommendations on transport safety.

The recommendations are:

1. TfL should continue to work with London TravelWatch, the Rail Delivery Group, the Met and BTP to ensure that there is consistent messaging throughout all active bystander campaigns to reduce the potential for confusion among passengers.
2. TfL should implement a ‘one-stop shop’ for reporting incidents and concerns on public transport in London. This should include working with the BTP and Met Police to agree a common reporting strategy to include all transport modes, including buses through the same app or web portal, as well as offline options. TfL should ensure this is clearly communicated, including through the use of QR codes for easy download, and also appropriately integrated within the TfL Go App and website.
3. TfL should undertake in-depth analysis of the relationship between staffing levels, crime incidents and customer perceptions of safety to evaluate changes over the past five years. This analysis should be published and shared with the Committee by September 2024.
4. TfL should ensure a complete and up-to-date archive of the new “Six-month Crime and Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) Reports” is kept in the “Safety & Security” section of the TfL website alongside the previous “TfL Crime and Antisocial Behaviour Bulletins”.
5. TfL should implement the planned interactive dashboard by September 2024 to allow Londoners to access and understand the latest crime data on the transport network. This should be tested with Londoners to make sure it is easy to use, comprehensive and prominent in an appropriate part of the TfL website.
6. TfL, the Met Police and BTP should continue to encourage diverse employment on the frontline. To support this, the Committee recommends that TfL, the Met Police and BTP carry out a review of how their policies to encourage diverse employment to frontline positions are working, and share with the Committee an action plan for how each organisation will increase diversity to frontline positions by July 2024.
7. Recognising the varying perceptions of Police amongst some communities, the Mayor should ensure that TfL continues to show leadership in engaging and consulting with community and representative groups so policies and support around personal security are codesigned with organisations, communities, and representative groups.
8. The Mayor and TfL should develop an accessible online reporting portal for passengers to identify locations where they currently feel unsafe. This could be used to implement interventions to increase safety in these areas, with feedback provided to users for accountability on actions taken in response.
9. The Mayor should ensure that CCTV retention periods across the TfL network are increased to 31 days as soon as practicable, and accelerate the roll out of 4G and 5G coverage across the whole network to aid real-time reporting. The Mayor should write to the Committee by April 2024 about current status and the detailed timeline for reaching these goals. Once TfL has achieved 31 days retention, it should update the Committee and set out how it will ensure customers are suitably informed.