Transport Safety Officers now on the city’s bus network to reassure communities

Transport safety officers have been recruited to help deter and reduce anti-social behaviour across the bus network in Stoke-on-Trent.

Four officers, have commenced patrols across the bus network, including Hanley and Longton bus stations, providing a uniformed presence to address and prevent anti-social behaviour incidents and to provide general reassurance for passengers using the bus network.

The role of the Transport Safety Officers (TSOs) is primarily to be a presence to deter, educate and prevent anti-social behaviour, and to provide reassurance to the travelling public. However, if necessary, the TSOs will have powers of enforcement.

Through the Community Safety Accreditation Scheme (CSAS), awarded by Staffordshire Police, the TSOs have devolved use of eight CSAS powers. These include powers to issue fixed penalty notices, obtain personal details and proactively deal with nuisance behaviour that can significantly affect passenger’s journeys. Penalty notices could be issued for behaviour such as littering, flyposting and vandalism.

In order to prepare, the officers have gone through extensive training and spent time shadowing TSOs from Transport for West Midlands. The intention is now to recruit up to six officers, who will initially patrol for 15 months. People who are interested can apply at https://recruitment.stoke.gov.uk.

Councillor Majid Khan cabinet member for community safety and resilience, said: “It is great news we now have these transport safety officers in place. We hope this will reduce the overall incidents of ASB on and around the public transport network in Stoke-on-Trent and that it will provide general reassurance, particularly for more vulnerable members of society, including the elderly, young persons and women.

“When you are using public transport please say hello to them, they are extremely friendly and are here to help you and make your journeys more enjoyable.

“Promoting the use of public transport across the city is a big priority for the administration. We have recently added extra journeys on a number of bus routes so that residents can enjoy improved access to work, healthcare, retail and much more. It is all part of our wider vision of creating a healthier, wealthier, safer, greener, cleaner and fairer city for all.”

Chief Inspector Laura Davies, commander for the Stoke North Local Policing Team, said: “No one should suffer from fear, intimidation, abuse or violence on our public transport network and so we welcome today’s introduction of Transport Safety Officers. We will work with Stoke-on-Trent City Council to ensure public transport users feel safe and confident and use proactive neighbourhood policing to solve the root causes of crime and anti-social behaviour on the transport network.”

This comes as last year it was announced that Stoke-on-Trent City Council and Staffordshire Police had been awarded £500,000 to invest in a new pilot scheme to recruit TSOs to travel on the city’s bus network in a bid to keep travellers safe.

This is part of wider Government commitments to improving public transport and follows the recent allocation of £150m to improve bus services in the North and Midlands – the first tranche of £1bn of new funding, redirected from HS2 as part of Network North.