Appendix

Transport Committee

1 December 2005

Transcript of Item 5 – Crime and Safety at Suburban Railway Stations

Roger Evans (Chair): Can I welcome our witnesses to the Committee this morning, to talk about crime and safety at suburban railway stations. We have a whole bunch of questions to ask you this morning about this important issue. Can I just start with our witnesses from TfL, Mr Burton we have noticed, looking at the things we have been provided, an increase in levels of crime at stations in suburban London, both on the Underground and on surface rail. Could you just tell us a little bit about policing policy on the Underground and how that differs from what goes on on the surface railway?

Steve Burton (TfL Transport and Policing Enforcement Directorate): Essentially, over the last two to three years, we have invested additional resources – 200 additional officers on the network. We have used those officers to do, probably, what, in traditional terms, would be termed 'beat police'.

We have broken the Underground network up into 43 units, which are called groups of stations, which is mapped out to the London Underground management structures. We have then put a number of local Police Constables (PCs), who only work in those geographic areas. Therefore, they have some stations that they are responsible for and they are known locally to the staff and the passengers. It is a bit similar to the Safer Neighbourhood scheme within the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). We like it, because it provides local accountability and the officers get to know the local areas and they work very closely with local management. That has taken almost the entire 200 additional officers that we have put on.

London Underground British Transport Police (BTP) originally had 470 officers and then we added 200 to give the current total of 670. Almost all those officers have been overlaid on the network. We think that has worked really well with our identified local priorities. As I say, they work very much with the local staff, because many of the issues at a local level cannot necessarily purely be solved by police action. If it is a lighting issue or an issue around access to the rail through fencing problems, that has to be dealt with by the local management and the local rail operator. We build those links quite actively.

Roger Evans (Chair): Looking at the figures that we have in front of us here, we see crime is going up. Reported crime is going up in suburban stations. However, it appears to have gone up much more on London Underground.

Steve Burton (TfL): That is right. I think Ian Johnson might want to come in after me on this. Essentially, the reassurance layer, as we call it, which is a layer of local officers, undertake a large number of what we call proactive operations. They will do gate line checking, which is working with revenue officers to check tickets and ensure that people are travelling legally on the network. They will work very actively with local youths around stone throwing, criminal damage. They do a number of operations with drug dogs to check on drug issues around the station.

What that tends to generate is a large number of reported crimes. The phrase that is sometimes used

1

is ‘victimless crime’, which I am not sure is entirely true, because of course there are victims of all crime. Essentially, if you look at the figures, the vast majority, if not all, of the increase is the sort of crime that you tend to generate initially when you put a large number of officers down on the ground.

Linked to that, we think our passengers and our staff are also much more actively reporting these low- level issues, because they recognise that the police and ourselves are now taking a much more keen interest in these and dealing with them.

Ian Johnson (Chief Constable, British Transport Police): I support everything that Steve Burton said. I think the reassurance and policing capability that you have got through the funding that TfL have given us is absolutely brilliant. It is intended to mirror the neighbourhood policing arrangements within the Underground arrangements. I wish we could get the support to do the same on the overground network, because I think it would be a very effective way of policing that part of the network.

I think things like staff assaults, which have gone up, are very difficult to isolate, whether that is an increase in actual violence on the staff or an increase in confidence by members of the Underground staff who are now coming forward to tell us about that. Anti-social behaviour – the incidences of crime of anti-social behaviour get into our books based on the back of arrests. It is very much the product of additional police work. Things like hate crime, which obviously are a big concern to us, we have been advertising our willingness to embrace people who have been victims of hate crime.

I think there is, underlying the increases, a fair amount of additional reporting. However, obviously, we are watching it very carefully.

Roger Evans (Chair): You say you cannot get the same proactive approach with surface rail. What would you like to do there and why can you not?

Ian Johnson (BTP): It is essentially a funding issue. We are into quite a major encounter with the train operators about funding issues, because the force has, over many years, been, in my terms, massively underfunded, and, indeed, in terms of the Inspectorate of Constabulary and many other people who have looked at us formally, including the Department for Transport (DfT). That underfunding is currently being redressed, but of course it can only be redressed at a pace. That pace has not allowed us to take on board the sort of support that we had from TfL. We have actually now got about 150 Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs), which, 18 months ago, we did not have, which is a really good step forward. We also get good support from the Special Constabulary – 150 of those in London.

I think it is fundamentally a resource issue. We are always going to be stretched. We are a relatively small force, 2,500 for England, Scotland and Wales, 1,000 of which are in London, broadly speaking. We are always going to be pushed, with something like 700 stations and a lot of railway lines between them to police. Police numbers are important. I think things like better intelligence systems, better partnerships… We did not get picked up in all the Crime and Disorder Partnerships across London. Not every borough picked up on the transport issue, which I think is an opportunity for us in the future.

Network Rail has been persuaded to increase its level of investment in Closed Circuit Television (CCTV). Over the last 18 months, they have invested about £15 million in CCTV and have just put forward a programme for about another £40 million worth of it nationally. I think there are a lot of things that could be done, but underlying it all, I guess, essentially, is a funding issue.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): I would like to push you on this. You are all splendid people, I am sure, but there has been a big increase in police funding in London generally and you have not been

completely exempt from that. There has been quite a significant increase in your resources. Yet this seems to be the one significant area of London’s police jurisdiction where there has been an increase in reported crime. There has been a reduction everywhere else. I would have to ask you what you are doing with the money, when, on the face of it, you must be a bunch of incompetents, all of you, because you are getting more money and yet crime is going up.

Ian Johnson (BTP): I am not likely to agree with you on that.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): No, of course not.

Ian Johnson (BTP): I am not likely to agree with you that crime has gone up, either, because the figures for crime in London last year showed a flat perspective on two parts of my empire and a 1% reduction in the other. I do not agree with you that crime overall is going up. Certain categories of crime are going up.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): The figures we have suggest 35% increase over the last two years, I think, in the number of reported incidents within London.

Ian Johnson (BTP): You are looking at particular categories of crime. I am looking at the overall crime levels on the network.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): I do not understand. You have other crimes that you are not reporting to us, or what?

Ian Johnson (BPT): No, no. I have a set of crime data that lays out what happened in my London North area and London South area and in London Underground area.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): I do not want to get bogged down in figures, but the numbers we have suggest there has been an increase from 26,000 to 30,000 reported crimes on the rail network in London. 26,000 in 2003/04 up to 30,428 in 2004/05. Indeed, that spurred the question about increase on the Underground, but there has been an increase on the other parts of the network as well. The fact is that you, BTP, are responsible for the Underground and the national rail network. It is a place where Londoners feel fearful of crime and where the figures suggest you are not getting on top of it.

Ian Johnson (BTP): I do not know about that. The picture is that, across the whole of the capital, at each railway station, there is on average a crime per week. That is not horrendous. I would like there to be none, but that is not a problem that is running away with us. On robbery, we have had major reductions in robbery across the whole of London – some 20% odd in that. Some of the other issues of violent crime, like staff assaults, for example, I think are very much the product of us engaging much better – and absolutely correctly much better – with the industry. They have confidence in us because we are deploying techniques like the use of DNA, which we pioneered in relation to spitting incidents on railway staff. They produced a major increase in the detection. I do not accept your fundamental point.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): I am not saying it is personally your fault, Mr Johnson, although in some instances it might be. If I could pursue this, because there is no point in us being here and all agreeing with each other that London is wonderful and everything is fine, because it clearly is not.

The thesis I am working on is on that, on London’s stations, we have what I call a jurisdictional problem. The MPS do not go onto them because they are your turf. The borough councils have trouble talking to the train operators because they do not want to spend any money on anything that is outside their franchise agreement. The Safer Neighbourhood schemes, which are working, do not

really tread onto them either. The CCTV camera systems do not work and speak to each other, so borough control rooms cannot look at them.

It is a complete bloody mess, basically, so that we do not know what is going on. These are like black spots, dark spots, within boroughs, where no one is in control and it is a sort of anarchy. If you want to go to sniff some glue, that is where you go. If you want to mug an old lady, that is where you go.

Ian Johnson (BTP): You are much safer on the transport system than you are generally across London. That is a fact. You are much safer. You start from a premise of greater safety. In terms of the CCTV being a mess, £16 million worth of investment in major stations sounds to me like a promising step forward.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): Does a single one of those cameras link into a borough control room?

Ian Johnson (Chief Constable, British Transport Police): No.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): Not a single one.

Ian Johnson (BTP): No. I think, on the issue of linking up of CCTV, I think there is certainly work to be done, but I do not think that is necessarily a single London issue. I do not think it is particularly a borough issue.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): Whose problem is it, then?

Roger Evans (Chair): We will come back to CCTV a little bit later, because we have a structure here of questions, but it is a very good point.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): We will leave it in the air that at present it is nobody’s problem. It does not work but it is nobody’s problem.

Ian Johnson (BTP): No, no. On the business of jurisdiction in railway stations, your experience and mine are very different. I, on a daily basis, welcome and see PCSOs from the MPS around Victoria, around Charing Cross and the like. We, indeed, walk around the outside of it. There is absolutely no boundary issue there. We have regular meetings with the Transport Operational Command Unit (TOCU) and our Area Commanders. We do joint operations with them. There is absolutely no boundary sensitivity whatsoever. They do some fantastic work with us. We do some fantastic work with them. We have done loads of joint operations, which have produced terrific results for Londoners.

Graham Tope (Assembly Member): . We have been given numbers, from BTP, of your staffing generally, but it says that London Underground, 682 police officers and PCSOs – that is London Underground – which is mostly within the Greater London boundaries – not entirely, but mostly so. Then it says London South, 269 officers and PCSOs, London North, 286 officers and PCSOs. Could you tell us what your boundaries are for London South and London North?

Ian Johnson (BTP): I think the numbers you have there are the ones that we regard as being employed within the boundaries you would regard as London. London North goes as far as Norwich and London South goes as far as Bournemouth

Graham Tope (Assembly Member): Not even the Mayor has that ambition. Do you know what sort of numbers you have for your London South and your London North?

Ian Johnson (BTP): I think they are the numbers that you actually have there.

Graham Tope (Assembly Member): Therefore what we are talking about is, from an area from, I think you said Norwich, down to Weymouth, I think, was it not, or the south coast. It is all the same from here, really, is it not? We have about 500 covering, really, more than south-east England, south and east England, and London Underground have very nearly 700. There is a huge imbalance there. That is really what I am trying to draw out.

Ian Johnson (BTP): Absolutely.

Graham Tope (Assembly Member): A huge imbalance. As you know, where I live, in an Underground-free area, we would like to see similar numbers for the overground. Getting back to where we started with the reporting, I think it is being suggested – and I am sure this must be substantially true – that the huge increase in reported crime on London Underground is because it is both easier to report and the feeling that something will happen if you do report it, it is worth doing so. It must therefore follow that there must be huge underreporting on the overground.

Ian Johnson (BTP): Absolutely.

Graham Tope (Assembly Member): Therefore, in fact – and this is not a criticism of you, it is a statement of fact – the figures we have for reported crime on the overground rail within London are hugely understated. We do not know how much, but they must be so.

Ian Johnson (BTP): The British Crime Survey estimates of this sort of issue nationally are that you get about 20% of real crime reported. Therefore, about four-fifths is the dark figure of unreported crime. Of course, you never really know how far into that dark figure that we have actually got, but we will certainly have got further into it in London Underground area than we will have done in the overland area.

Graham Tope (Assembly Member): When people do actually report the crime, I would guess and I am guessing that in suburban… Let us take Sutton, which I know you know quite well. If there is a crime to be reported from Sutton station, it is more likely to be reported at Sutton police station a quarter of a mile away than it is to search for one of these very thinly[?] disguised BTP people. What happens, then, if a crime taking place on Sutton station is reported at the MPS station just down the road?

Ian Johnson (BTP): They put it onto their Crime Report Information System (CRIS) crime recording system and we have a CRIS crime recording terminal within our crime recording centre. It is transferred to us electronically.

Graham Tope (Assembly Member): So that crime would count as, can I call it a BTP crime -you know what I mean – as distinct from an MPS crime.

Ian Johnson (BTP): Yes. No crime, transferred crime to BTP.

Graham Tope (Assembly Member): When you clear it up, it is your clear-up.

Ian Johnson (BTP): That is when we have a fight, yes.

Graham Tope (Assembly Member): Given how very, very thinly spread you are on the overground rail system, what do you think can be done? I have certainly backed your request to increase funding, but given the funding restrictions – and we may come to that later – what do you think actually, realistically, can be done? Perhaps in cooperation with the MPS – and I know you work well together and we will not stray onto how closely you should be allied with the MPS – what can be done, realistically, to try to improve this?

Ian Johnson (BTP): I think it is a fair old challenge, to start with. 10,000 miles of railway, 3,000 stations is a big challenge for anybody. I think there are some really good things going on. South Eastern Trains, a couple of weeks ago, launched their first accredited officers scheme. They have employed people who will be multitasked, but primarily they will be deployed on trains, in high- visibility jackets, to provide reassurance and preventative policing on those trains. They are also empowered to issue Fixed Penalty Notices for minor discretions and they are also empowered to undertake a ticket inspection role. I think multitasking of…

Graham Tope (Assembly Member): Can I interrupt you, Ian? These are accredited officers. They are not PCSOs and they are not Specials. They are something different.

Ian Johnson (BTP): No. They are employed by the train operators. The Government, about two or three years ago, introduced a scheme to allow police forces to accredit quasi-security organisations. They did not, as ever, include BTP. We managed to get it included in the legislation that set up our new authority a year ago and so this is the first entry into the scheme.

I think it is a really good example of joint working between us and the industry. We have to check the people out. We have to vet the training. We have to vet the quality of the performance of these people. I can withdraw the accreditation at any stage if they do not meet the standards that are set. I think it is a really good example of how we can expand visibility and reassurance capability on the network. I hope others will follow suit.

Graham Tope (Assembly Member): I remember talking with the Connex Managing Director a while back. One of the things they were very proud of – one of the few things they were very proud of, actually – was their scheme for Special Constables. They encouraged a a number of their staff – to become Special Constables. They actually said it enabled the staff, the drivers in particular, to do their job better, as well as to be better Special Constables, because it made them more observant. It helped them to know what to do. That, presumably, is a scheme you would encourage other train operators to do?

Ian Johnson (Chief Constable, British Transport Police): Absolutely. As I say, we have, in the London area, about 150 Specials, most through that sort of route, and others, obviously, across the rest of the country. That is another really good scheme, because not only does it build relationships between us and the industry staff, but we actually have another pair of eyes and ears out there on the network all the time, because whilst they are driving the trains, they are still thinking like police officers. We get good feedback from them on intelligence and good value for them when they are operating as police officers, because they know and understand the railway network.

Graham Tope (Assembly Member): Do you know which train operating companies do encourage their staff to become special constables?

Ian Johnson (BTP): Virgin do, GNER do. We are trying to encourage the National Express Group. South West Trains. Another initiative that perhaps is worth talking about is the South West Trains TravelSafe scheme, which they have been running for about two or three years now, where they employ, again, members of their staff in high-visibility uniform. They are mainly there as reassurance. They do not have an enforcement role, but they are a very, very good scheme. They have just under 100 of those on their network.

Graham Tope (Assembly Member): Is BTP represented on any Crime and Disorder Partnership in any of the London boroughs?

Ian Johnson (BTP): Yes, we are.

Graham Tope (Assembly Member): Given your numbers, how actively can you participate?

Ian Johnson (BTP): I think this is a real challenge for us nationally, with 900 potential partnerships up and down the country and a force of 2,500. You can do the sums and work out… What we try to do is be intelligence-led. Where there is a clearly identified large problem, we engage. We try to use the crime and disorder audits to identify those boroughs in which we should play a part. Indeed, I think we do in Newham. We are intelligence-led. We do it where we are invited. We do it where we see there is a problem, but we clearly cannot do it everywhere.

Angie Bray (Assembly Member): To step back a bit, a couple of years ago there was some debate about the particular issue of women feeling safe about travelling at night and what have you, about how one might encourage them to feel safer. There were suggestions about women-only carriages. I thought that was pretty comprehensively knocked down by people like the Jill Dando Trust that said that the trouble with that is it would actually attract the attention of people to those particular carriages. How do you keep undesirable people out of them?

As I understand it, one of the things that has been done in Australia, which has proved quite successful, however, is that, particularly during the more anti-social hours, there should be a carriage, probably in the middle of the train, where a security guard or whatever could be seated with a blue light that would be on if there was a security guard present on that train. That would then be an obvious place for people who do feel less safe to go and sit. I wonder whether any thought has been given to that, because it seems such a simple solution, and whether you think that might be helpful?

Ian Johnson (BTP): I think it is a really good idea. I think the challenges would be resourcing challenges. The blue light would be cheap, but the someone sitting with it would be very expensive.

Angie Bray (Assembly Member): Even if you just, perhaps, did it during night-time travelling hours.

Ian Johnson (BTP): I think this is where we get into the accredited officers, the PCSOs, the other parts of the extended police family, where we could be certainly trying out something like that. It sounds like a really good idea.

Elizabeth Howlett (Assembly Member): I just want to go back to Lord Tope’s questioning of you. I want to find out what these people are. Is it like a service level agreement that the MPS has with TfL? Are these accredited and trained by you? Are they police officers, or are they still civilian security staff?

Ian Johnson (BTP): They are still civilian security staff, employed by the train operator. I see the police family as being a pretty long continuum, from a professional, fully paid-up cop along a whole continuum, including PCSOs, including Special Constables, including accredited staff. Indeed, in some parts of the UK – and this is another initiative that we could expand – where security guards have been engaged by the industry, we actually take over the tasking and deployment of them. Their intelligence is then linked into ours and their deployment patterns are mapped onto ours.

Elizabeth Howlett (Assembly Member): Who are they answerable to?

Ian Johnson (BTP): The accreditation scheme means that the operator is answerable to me for its accountability. They have to set up proper arrangements for accountability, which I have to accept as being reasonable in the circumstances. If I do not, I can withdraw the accreditation. Ultimately, they are accountable to me, in the sense that I can put a stop to the show. In terms of their deployment and their regulation on a day-to-day basis, they are very much in the hands of the operator, although, operationally, they are tied into all of our plans. We know what they are doing. They are part of our

overall operating framework. It is a sort of joined-up operation with them. I think it is a really good scheme.

Elizabeth Howlett (Assembly Member): Who gains from the fines they impose?

Ian Johnson (Chief Constable, British Transport Police): The railway companies get their fines, so they get their ticket money back. On fines more generally, they go into the exchequer and the railway operators do not get those.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): I was just hoping– that you could give me two or three examples of stations in London where there have been particular crime problems and where you have worked with the local Crime and Disorder Partnership, local authority, local MPS Safer Neighbourhood team to tackle that problem and where you can demonstrate that there has been a reduction of crime as a consequence.

Ian Johnson (BTP): I think Finsbury Park is a really good example of a long-running partnership. There are three boroughs. It is a very critical point of engagement. We have people working alongside the MPS there. We have joint accommodation, joint operational plans. I think that has made a difference around that part of the world.

Peter Zieminski (Chief Superintendent, Head of Strategic Development, British Transport Police): There is a specific example of Belvedere, where there is a joint crime solving partnership, working with the MPS.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): Any down Graham Tope’s way, in south-west London?

Ian Johnson (Chief Constable, British Transport Police): There will be. I do not have one to my hand to tell you, but there will be examples. There certainly is not one at Sutton.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): Because this is an important issue for Londoners, I think it would be helpful if you could provide us, outside the meeting, with a list of such initiatives.

Ian Johnson (Chief Constable, British Transport Police): Certainly, yes.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): We do recognise that it is sensitive, that it might give a signal to people that they can go to stations where there is no initiative to cause trouble.

Ian Johnson (BTP): No, I do not think so. There is a range of initiatives, from, if you like, practical interventions to long-term strategic interventions. We will certainly be very happy to provide you with those.

Murad Qureshi (Assembly Member): Yes, indeed. Crimes are not only going up, but they are particularly going up at the interchange stations. That is partly explained by the volume of passengers, but what other factors do you feel have contributed to that?

Ian Johnson (BTP): I think there is the reporting phenomenon, which we have gone through. I think alcohol is an issue. I think drugs are an issue. I think, as you have noted, passenger numbers are up, so there is a probability of more crimes with more people around. Football still remains a problem, in terms of violence. I think they are the main areas.

Roger Evans (Chair): Which interchanges are particularly bad? We have a list of all of them here, which includes Amersham and Stratford. I rather suspect things are worse at Stratford than they are at Amersham

Ian Johnson (Chief Constable, British Transport Police): Stratford is at the top end of the league table it’s a big issue.

Murad Qureshi (Assembly Member): The Olympic Centre. The one I know is Queen's Park. You have a police station across the road. There are clearly alcohol and drugs issues there, but you do not have a football crowd going through that I know of. It comes back to John Biggs’s earlier comment that there seems to be a total lack of any coordination at all in dealing with specific places. Could you at least inform me about what kind of things could be done there that could actually, within your resources, make things a lot better?

Ian Johnson (BTP ): I do not have detailed knowledge of the Queen's Park area. I have 3,000 stations and responsibilities into Scotland, so I am not in a position to give you detailed, useful information about particular stations within the network.

In terms of the generality of being tied up with the MPS, for example, we have, as I said at the start, a very regular… We have a monthly meeting with each of the Area Commanders for me in London and the transport OCU in the MPS. The transport OCU in the MPS has very good relationships with all the boroughs in London, obviously, because it has a job to do with all those boroughs in London. I personally meet with a senior Commander in the MPS on a three-monthly basis to make sure that we have strategic arrangements in place to ensure we are joined up. There are daily exchanges of intelligence. We have exactly the same intelligence system as the MPS. A year ago, there were about 250,000 exchanges on the intelligence system from the MPS to us and about 160,000 enquiries going from us to them.

There is, therefore, a pretty high level of operational engagement between us and the MPS. I do not accept that there is a lack of it. I am not saying that there could not be more of it, because clearly there could be lots more of it.

Murad Qureshi (Assembly Member): Do you think, then, that there is a case for having a London Transport Police, given our particular situation in London and the level of passenger movement that we have? You told us earlier that you are covering the whole of south-east England, and that, frankly, for most Londoners, is going to be quite shocking.

Ian Johnson (BTP): Yes. We actually cover the whole of England, Scotland and Wales. I expect they would find that equally shocking, if indeed anybody finds it shocking. I think that there are clear benefits in having a single boundary for an agency policing any particular area. I also think there are very clear benefits in having a single boundary for people who have functional responsibilities.

It does not make a lot of sense to have x number of police forces policing London. It does not make a lot of sense to have 43 police forces policing the railways. How do you deal with boundary issues? How do you deal with crime that goes from one end of the network to the other? Who do operators go to when they travel through London into other parts of the UK? Who do they deal with? Who do the victims of crime deal with? Who looks at the intelligence patterns? Who takes any interest in them? I think the business of does it make sense to have three, no, I would say of course it does not. It does not make sense to have 43 police forces policing the railways. You have to make up your mind what is the best balance of advantage in those arrangements.

I think that, whatever you do with the boundaries, you still have boundaries. Therefore, the issue for me is not about where you set those boundaries, it is about how you manage across them. We bought the same intelligence system as the MPS. We structure our tasking arrangement around the national intelligence model that the MPS uses. When the MPS buys, fully, the national Airwaves system, we will have the same radio communications as them. We bought the same command and control system as the rest of the forces up and down the country, to make sure that we are aligned. If the MPS acquires a similar system, that would help.

There are issues here about boundaries. It is my job to make sure that there are very good working relationships at a personal level and very good structural relationships for us to operate within. We have to settle on 700 police officers on the Underground, 290 stations. It is a fair old challenge, with all the railway lines in between and millions of people using the system each day. We are not looking at perfection, here, but we are looking at squeezing the best out of it that we possibly can. That is what I think we are doing.

Murad Qureshi (Assembly Member): Whilst I accept the crossover issues, you do, I am sure, acknowledge that there is a geographical case for a London Transport Police force.

Ian Johnson (BTP): I think you have to make up your mind whether the balance of advantage of having a joined-up policing arrangement on the railways nationally is outweighed by or is not outweighed by the arrangements in London. Then, to say draw your boundaries somewhere different, you just have another set of boundary problems. All you ever do is displace those problems to another point. You do not solve them.

The way to deal with the issue, in my terms, is to address the barriers that emerge as a result of those structural divisions. I think we have ourselves plugged well into the MPS’ integrated intelligence system, well into the MPS’ crime recording system, well into the national radio system. We have very, very good personal relationships operationally, on the ground. If you go down to Victoria today you will see MPS PCSOs wandering around there and you will see our PCSOs wandering round the outside. There is a very good practical, day-to-day working relationship. We share intelligence data. Some of the hotspots are not the same, but we do operate very, very closely together.

Murad Qureshi (Assembly Member): I understand why you are having to say that, but if I can just extend it a bit further. Londoners do want to be policed consistently. One example, I think, where there have been differences, with my Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) hat on, has been Stop and Search. There was a difference between the way you were handled on the streets and the way on the tube. It may be for understandable reasons, but clearly the practices of the MPS were not entirely picked up by the BTP.

Ian Johnson (BTP): I do not agree. We follow exactly the same national policy around Stop and Search. We operate within exactly the same legal framework. We have carried out something like 22,000 – these are Section 44 issues in particular, which I guess is what… 22,000 Stop and Searches. We have had six complaints, two of which related to officers from other forces. The other four have all been resolved.

Despite the media coverage on it, the reality is, in terms of what did people complain about, six complaints over that period of time with that number of difficult interventions, I think is a pretty well managed operation. We do not do it any differently from the MPS. Obviously, with the railways being a target, it is hardly surprising that there was more of that activity on the railways than outside the railways at that time.

Roger Evans (Chair): I do not want to turn this Committee into an MPA Committee. God help us. I do not think we want to go down that road. Do you want to move on to the CCTV question? We have slightly covered that already.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): We were hoping for a witness from Newham. Unless you are sitting in the wrong seat, you are from South Eastern Trains, I think. The question to you, then, I think, is can you tell us how difficult you found it – assuming you want to do this – to integrate your CCTV into local authority control centres?

David Scott (Head of Crime and Safety, South Eastern Trains): Whilst there is no overarching policy from local or central Government, we have on occasions tried to engage. A good example would be Lewisham. I think we started down that path about two years ago, give or take. It all came from a local consulting meeting, where we were engaging with local authorities as a company – very much people meeting people. An opportunity arose for us to link into the borough CCTV. We entered into a partnership and it is just now starting to deliver, ironically, at the same time as the TfL funding is coming through for our own integrated CCTV system. We have tried, but it was quite challenging and it is only just starting operation in one location.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): The starting point is that, if you put a CCTV camera on a station, it will go into a railway company control room.

David Scott (, South Eastern Trains): Eventually, yes. That is the vision for the future.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): What we find with cameras in the rest of London is that quite often the local authority will have it and the police force will have an override or a way to link into it, a dual feed, if you like. Do you have that sort of technology?

David Scott (, South Eastern Trains): Probably the best way to clarify it would be to say that we have an historical system that we have had for about seven years now…

John Biggs (Assembly Member): A what system, sorry?

David Scott (Head of Crime and Safety, South Eastern Trains): An historical system we inherited. It is about seven years old, dating from the start of Connex. It very much relies on static cameras covering many locations, but with an overriding, overarching aim to capture people entering and leaving for facial imaging.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): Is that to an industry standard, or is it just one that Connex developed?

David Scott (Head of Crime and Safety, South Eastern Trains): We are a separate company operating within the railway environment and we can very much go our own way.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): Every train operating company can devise its own CCTV system?

David Scott (Head of Crime and Safety, South Eastern Trains): Absolutely, and they do.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): Good God. Carry on.

David Scott (South Eastern Trains): We like to think we try to do the best we can. Certainly, we have moved forward from there, with a programme of digitalised CCTV installation and monitored CCTV installation. The options were perhaps to integrate with local authorities – extremely complicated, complex, logistically – or to do what we are doing now, which is to link our Metro stations – which will be the ones that you will be interested in within the Authority – into a central monitoring suite, from where we can direct the police if need be. To answer your earlier question, we do not link in directly to the police.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): It is very difficult, then, to get a system that speaks… If you are in a town centre and the station is part of the town centre, you may have two completely separate systems that do not talk to each other.

David Scott (South Eastern Trains): Absolutely. However, I will qualify that by saying where we have actually managed to engage, for example, in Lewisham, the vision was to let Lewisham Borough

Council view our cameras, to fill in the dark spots, as you said earlier on. We accept we do have bits in each borough where our stations are.

Ian Johnson (BTP): The position nationally around CCTV writ large – not just within transport, within the whole world – is that there is no integration. This has been quite substantially brought to the fore, obviously, on the back of the events on 7 and 21 July. The Home Office, through their Crime Reduction Delivery Board, have required the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) – that is me, in this case – to set up a working group to look at the whole issue of CCTV nationally. The issues to which you refer here are a very significant microcosm of a much bigger issue about the integration of CCTV writ large, so shopping centres, airports, transport locations, private security arrangements. Nobody operates to a common standard. Nobody operates to a common policy.

Roger Evans (Chair): Even with all the new trains that are being built – as standard, now, every carriage on every train will have a camera – there is no standard system.

Ian Johnson (BTP): Absolutely.

David Scott (South Eastern Trains): Could I just expand on that? We, as a company, when we buy new trains, install cameras every time. However, we are not obliged to. We do it because we think it is a good thing to do.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): They may not even have film in them.

David Scott (South Eastern Trains): All our cameras are digital so they definitely are recording.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): That is progress.

Roger Evans (Chair): That, I think, raises another interesting question, which is: is your software compatible with the sort of software the police would use? In other words, if there was an incident on one of your trains, would you be able to download your images and would they be useful to the police in tracking down the perpetrator?

David Scott (South Eastern Trains): Absolutely, and it happens on a daily basis. In fact, I like to think that part of our drive to install CCTV is assisting BTP in their reduction in robbery on our network, significantly. We actually produce evidential packages for the police that they can stick into their systems and play.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): If there is no standard system nationally, at least that does mean that you have the opportunity in London to standardise your systems so that they can talk to MPS system and so they can talk to the local borough’s system as well.

David Scott (South Eastern Trains): The technology exists. We can run feeds from all of our systems to…

John Biggs (Assembly Member): Who would pay for that?

David Scott (South Eastern Trains): Generally speaking, I think the expectation is that we do. However, we have had some fantastic funding from TfL and some real support from TfL to expand our systems. We are working in partnership with the local authorities.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): Very finally, then, there is a Safer Stations accreditation, is there not? Is there a CCTV standard for that?

David Scott (South Eastern Trains): The CCTV would feed into the accreditation process as part of our response to crime.

Darren Johnson (Assembly Member): This is mainly directed at South Eastern Trains. What responsibility do station staff have for customer safety, beyond their actual specific job description?

David Scott (South Eastern Trains): In what respect?

Darren Johnson (Assembly Member): In terms of overseeing general passenger safety whilst they are in the station area. Do staff have a general responsibility for that, outside their specific job description, ticket staff or whatever?

David Scott (South Eastern Trains): If I understand the question rightly, certainly every member of our staff is expected to constantly assess health and safety risks. For example, slipping and tripping hazards, items like that, would be expected to be addressed. If you are talking about the crime and disorder picture, our staff are expected and do reassure, engage, deter crime and call the police if necessary. They form part of the tasking process for the railway enforcement officers that Ian Johnson has mentioned previously. Indeed, via me and the safety department – because we actually have a safety department – we feed into the police national tasking process.

Darren Johnson (Assembly Member): Is specific training provided, then, to enable the staff to deal with those crime situations in all cases?

Mike Gibson (Public Affairs Manager, South Eastern Trains): In terms of actual training, no. What we do offer is conflict avoidance training, if that answers your question.

Darren Johnson (Assembly Member): It might be more reassuring for the public, though, if they knew that all staff on your trains and your stations had received basic training to deal with a crime situation or potential danger situation. Obviously, you take on board the points about compensation and so on, but just in terms of when to call the police, how to diffuse situations, all those sorts of things, surely some basic training would be…

Mike Gibson (South Eastern Trains): Yes. As a part of their induction course, all customer-facing staff, which would include station staff, train conductors, would have that sort of induction training to tell them what they should do if they spot a suspect package, how to deal with an unruly passenger, how to call for the MPS, the Kent police, the BTP. Those basic standards are included in their induction training.

David Scott (South Eastern Trains): If I could just expand on that, we actually do a specific counter-terrorism module in the training, which also covers the generality of reporting incidents to the police. It is in depth. It is in detail. We like to think that our preparedness is pretty good in that respect. That is probably the ultimate crime.

Over and above that, as the company’s Head of Crime and Security, I send out regular briefings. Particularly, previously, I have sent out a briefing on who to call in particular circumstances, how to deal with a situation. We are very anxious, as well, at the same time, not to put our staff in greater jeopardy, because whilst we expect them to assist and protect if they can, we do not want them endangered as well. It is a balance.

Darren Johnson (Assembly Member): Obviously, part of the training is about striking that balance. Is that training compulsory, then, for all staff who come into contact with the public? Is that a basic requirement?

David Scott (, South Eastern Trains): Customer-facing staff, but we have had to prioritise. We have sent the most at-risk staff for training first. It is an ongoing programme. It is a rolling programme. The conductors are now virtually all trained. Platform and station staff are rolling through as we speak.

Darren Johnson (Assembly Member): In terms of your customer-facing staff, you are getting rid of some of your ticket office staff, but are saying that they will be replaced with more front-line staff. What exactly will these front-line staff who you are bringing in be doing?

Mike Gibson (South Eastern Trains): The staff will be redeployed to a variety of front-line positions. That is working on a gate line, that is station assistance, what we call line side assistance, as railway enforcement officers and as revenue protection officers.

Darren Johnson (Assembly Member): Will this be on the trains or at the stations?

Mike Gibson (South Eastern Trains): It will be both on our trains and on our stations. On top of those 99 staff who we intend to redeploy, we will be creating an extra 39 posts on top of that. There will be an actual increase in the staff. If I could just outline on that, our plans for this are with the Department for Transport (DfT), who have taken over the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA)’s responsibilities. Last Friday, we were advised by the DfT that they did not intend to take a decision until a new train operator took over the integrated Kent franchise.

Darren Johnson (Assembly Member): Will this mean that some stations that are currently staffed will be left completely unstaffed as a result of this?

Mike Gibson (South Eastern Trains): In the Metro area, which you are concerned with, no.

Darren Johnson (Assembly Member): There will be a permanent staffing presence at all of the stations where there is currently a permanent staffing presence.

Mike Gibson (South Eastern Trains): That is correct, yes.

Darren Johnson (Assembly Member): This will be an additional presence, then. If you are getting rid of the ticket office staff, how can you ensure a permanent presence there?

Mike Gibson (South Eastern Trains): We are not getting rid of the ticket office staff. We intend revising hours of operation. Let us take a station that I know fairly well, Hayes, which is at the GLA fringes. The passengers at Hayes station will notice a reduction in the ticket office opening hours, but what they will see is an increase in front-line staff on Hayes station and on the trains serving Hayes.

I think it is also worth pointing out that there is some misconception as to what ticket office staff actually do. Their task is to sell tickets. Once in the ticket office, they cannot go out on station platforms, so the ticket office staff are not in a position to deter crime or to act as a deterrent to anti- social customers, are not able to assist disabled passengers. Their job is to sell tickets, full stop.

Darren Johnson (Assembly Member): Can I bring in TfL? Do you have a view on this?

Trevor Hill (TfL London Rail): South Eastern Trains’ policy on booking offices?

Darren Johnson (Assembly Member): On the general staffing issue as well, yes.

Trevor Hill (TfL London Rail): Yes, we have a view on staffing. It is fair to say that passengers in any survey regard staffing, the presence of staff, as probably the single most important element. I would say that staff does not necessarily have to be train operating staff. It could be policemen. It

could be security staff. We need to bear in mind that it is a human interaction that is important and the visibility of people on stations and on trains.

We also feel that the presence of just a member of staff is not automatically the right thing. In other words, as Mr Gibson, I think, has mentioned, simply saying that a member of staff in a booking office makes a station safer does not necessarily happen. It is what that member of staff does, how that member of staff is trained, whether they are proactive, whether they show themselves, whether they are highly visible. It is important to TfL, therefore, that staff should be proactive, should be highly visible. Our policy is that we, all other things being equal, would like more staff on stations. We would like them to be about, be seen to be about and to interact with passengers.

Darren Johnson (Assembly Member): Do you believe that ticket office staff do have a role in terms of deterring crime, both in terms of making individual passengers feel safer through having that presence and providing reassurance to the public, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, actually acting as a physical deterrent to people who may be thinking about committing crimes, because there is a human presence there?

Trevor Hill (TfL London Rail): All staff can have a presence and are deterrents towards anti-social behaviour. However, for example, a member of ticket office staff, say, 50 yards from a platform on a different level to the platform, who cannot actually see what is going on on a platform, does not actually make any difference. If, however, the member of ticket office staff has CCTV cameras or screens so that they can see… For example, I was at New Barnet last Friday and the member of staff there, in the ticket office, has screens in his office so that he can see what is going on on the platform. Then, yes, they can be a deterrent to anti-social behaviour.

Darren Johnson (Assembly Member): Do we have stations, then, where there is a good example of actually having a joined-up approach in terms of the different types of staffing and so on, so that there is some sort of permanent human presence there that does act as a real deterrent?

Trevor Hill (TfL London Rail): Yes. There are over 300 stations within the GLA area. I am talking about national rail here, the overground, as it is called. Over half of those, 50% of those stations, now, through TfL funding but also through partnership funding as well, will have integrated CCTV systems that are 24/7 monitored by central control rooms. Without going through the individual 150 stations, most of South West Trains, most of Southern, a lot of South Eastern Trains.

It was referred to earlier about the investment TfL are putting in at South Eastern Trains. We are investing £3.8 million this financial year on South Eastern Trains, to provide CCTV and passenger help points, which will be 24/7 monitored through a control centre. Aspects such as lighting improvement, such as information systems, all those things are going into these stations. That is south of the river, if you like.

Also, this year, we are putting money into investment into CCTV and help points on the Thameslink stations, on what I call the Wimbledon loop, but I guess there is a proper name for the route on Thameslink. North of the river and west, we are putting over £1 million in the last 15 months into Great Western. We are putting many millions of pounds into CCTV on trains, both south, north and east of London. There are many, many examples of that going on.

Roger Evans (Chair): I would like to just cut to the chase with South Eastern Trains, though, and see exactly what you mean by this. Under your new system, if your guy on the ticket line sees someone being mugged on the platform, what is your training for them? What should they do?

David Scott (South Eastern Trains): We have a company hands-off policy. We do not expect staff to put themselves at risk or in danger, apart from the railway enforcement officers, who have powers under the byelaws to intervene. I think, generally speaking, human nature might dictate that our staff

might try to intervene, and they often do, to assist. However, their instructions from our training is to immediately call the police, either the BTP on 40999 or the local police on 999, for an immediate response. I think it is also important to note…

Roger Evans (Chair): How long would that take?

David Scott (Head of Crime and Safety, South Eastern Trains): As long as it takes to either take out a mobile telephone or to get to a landline.

Roger Evans (Chair): How long would the response take?

David Scott (South Eastern Trains): Generally speaking, as rapid as any other location within any other borough. We find, in central London, BTP can get there quicker. Elsewhere where we run trains, the local police can get there quicker, but eventually BTP will pick up the threads and investigate.

Geoff Pope (Deputy Chair): Again, looking at the South Eastern Trains proposals, because this is a situation where there has been adverse publicity. It sounds like your intention is to actually improve safety and security, but it has been publicised as being an adverse situation. Part of that is because, if a passenger arrives at a station and there is no one in the ticket office, the normal occurrence is there is no one on the station either, so one feels isolated and vulnerable. If you are going to try to have more situations where there is someone in the station, although not at the ticket office, surely you need to do more with publicity and information to make it clear what is actually happening on that station? Do you have plans for that?

Mike Gibson (South Eastern Trains): Yes. In terms of publicising our Schedule 17 proposals, we have gone extensively to the passenger groups – in London, London TravelWatch, the former LTUC. We have discussed these with local councils in our franchise area. We have also conducted surveys amongst our passengers as to what they want. In an independent conducted survey, the feedback was that what our passengers wanted was more visible staff on the trains and on the station platforms, not necessarily staff in offices.

Geoff Pope (Deputy Chair): However, London TravelWatch have issued a press release saying they are not supporting this initiative.

Mike Gibson (South Eastern Trains): That is their right so to do. I have to go on and say the trade unions have mounted an extremely effective lobbying campaign against it. We envisage no compulsory redundancies. I think perhaps people have to look at whether members of staff would wish to be in a ticket office, protected from our passengers by a sheet of toughened glass, or else working on a station platform or on a train. I know, from the work we have done, the location where our passengers want to go to see our staff.

David Scott (South Eastern Trains): I think it is also worth bearing in mind that, for the first time within the GLA area, our Metro zone, we are going to have people in the back of trains other than revenue protection inspectors. Those people are specifically dedicated to reassuring, preventing crime and disorder and assisting the police. Therefore, we like to think we are taking steps forward to address these issues that I think you were raising previously.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): I appreciate that your staff – and this is similar with bus crews as well – are expected to stay at their station and not adopt a policing role of any kind. However, if a member of staff does that, would they be in breach of their contracts? What view would you take of their conduct if they acted like a human being and assisted someone?

David Scott (South Eastern Trains): Yes, again, it is a balancing act. We advise staff not to lay hands on, if we can put it that way, so if there is a dispute at a gate line, it really is not worth getting assaulted. That is our stance. I think you are describing a bit of a different situation, whereby a member of the public is perhaps being attacked, for example, worst-case scenario. Our staff do intervene.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): You stand behind your staff?

David Scott (Head of Crime and Safety, South Eastern Trains): Absolutely, 100%. We do not tell them to put themselves at risk, but we would be a very strange company if we turned round and criticised our staff for doing their civic duty.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): You can understand why I asked that.

David Scott (Head of Crime and Safety, South Eastern Trains): Absolutely.

Graham Tope (Assembly Member): I suppose this is to South Eastern Trains, but more on behalf of all the train operating companies. I think you are responsible, actually, for most, if not all, of the suburban rail stations. To what extent do you have independence in what work you carry out in improving the station environment?

David Scott (South Eastern Trains): This is pretty much out of my expertise, but I do have a general view. I do know that station improvements have to be done with permission from Network Rail. There is a process that we need to go through to do that. We cannot just ad hoc and of our own volition suddenly start changing stations.

Mike Gibson (South Eastern Trains): If I could perhaps expand on that. Ourselves and all the train operators lease our stations from Network Rail. We are responsible for the day-to-day operation. That includes minor repairs. If, say, a window was broken, it is our responsibility to fix it. If the roof was leaking or it involved major structural work, that would be our landlord’s responsibility.

Graham Tope (Assembly Member): Let us take a specific example. If you wanted to install ticket gates, something like that – which is of some interest to you, anyway, from a revenue point of view – are you free and able to do that, subject to your own funding? Do you have to go through this lengthy bureaucratic process and get Network Rail’s approval? How forthcoming is that and how long does it take?

Mike Gibson (Public Affairs Manager, South Eastern Trains): We have to go through what is called a station change process, which is basically getting the landlord's consent. Generally, we have an excellent relationship with Network Rail and that can be achieved fairly easily. Funding, of course, is always another issue.

Graham Tope (Assembly Member): Yes, I think we all understand the funding issue generally. Let us be clear about this. If, then, as a train operating company, you wish to make improvements to the station environment, for whatever reason, you would have to get landlord’s consent, to use your expression, from Network Rail. However, you would expect that that would be fairly readily forthcoming and fairly quick. Therefore, in reality, obviously subject to that consent, the improvements to be made on the station are down to the particular train operating company responsible for it.

Mike Gibson (South Eastern Trains): That is right. Obviously, I cannot speak for other companies. In South Eastern Trains' experience, particularly in the Metro area… we touched on, earlier, work we

are doing with TfL on getting security cameras in, thanks to TfL funding. All that has needed landlord’s consent from Network Rail and that has been forthcoming.

Graham Tope (Assembly Member): Again, I realise we are speaking generally, here, but the funding responsibility would rest with the train operating company, rather than with Network Rail.

Mike Gibson (South Eastern Trains): It depends what it is for. If it is funding for major structural works, such as a new roof, the station fabric, extending a platform, that would come from Network Rail, who in turn would receive central Government funding. If you were talking about something like ticket barriers or TV cameras, that would come out of our own resources, albeit with partnership funding from other agencies such as TfL and possibly even local councils.

David Scott (South Eastern Trains): Could I give a practical example of that, just to illustrate? At Belvedere, we as a company are part of a Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership, problem-solving partnership, with Bexley Borough Council, BTP and the MPS. Part of the issues that were highlighted by local communities – or one of the issues, one of the main issues – was lack of visibility on a footbridge. You could walk over and not be seen, so clearly you were vulnerable. Other aspects were waiting shelters, cameras and fencing around the platforms. We paid for part of it, the local authority paid for part of it, and the major structural stuff was paid for by Network Rail, who entered the partnership. They paid for the change to the bridge.

Graham Tope (Assembly Member): Presumably, as you yourselves have a capital programme, generally. What sort of level of expenditure within that programme might be available for station improvement, as distinct from station maintenance?

Mike Gibson (Public Affairs Manager, South Eastern Trains): I would need to get back to you on that one.

Graham Tope (Assembly Member): I understand that. I did not think you would have that off the top of your head. You can understand what we are trying to get at. Of course, I imagine that your capital expenditure is probably primarily on trains rather than stations. There will be an element of that which must be on maintaining however many stations you are responsible for. What is available, what are we realistically talking about, if we are looking for, in the case of this investigation, security improvements in stations?

Mike Gibson (South Eastern Trains): I will obviously have to go and check that out. In the main, our responsibilities are for day-to-day maintenance, which would not necessarily cover capital improvements.

David Scott (South Eastern Trains): When we do new builds, though, I think it is worth mentioning that we always bring BTP’s crime reduction team on board. We try to design out crime from an early stage. However, that would be new work, as opposed to ongoing maintenance.

Roger Evans (Chair): We do have a commitment from South Eastern Trains to provide us with that information.

Mike Gibson (South Eastern Trains): Yes.

Ian Johnson (Chief Constable, British Transport Police): Two points. One is you may or may not be aware that there was a National Audit Office report on maintaining and improving railway stations, published in July this year. That, I think, plays into all the issues that you are talking about. I think the point I was going to make was that one of the strategic issues, I think, which lies behind the decline in condition of some of the stations is the short nature of the franchises. There is no

payback time for it. If you like, it is really to make a decent, big point here. The decent, big point here, I think, would be around short franchises actually are not in anybody’s interests in this area.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): I wanted to pick up on that one, actually, because it seems to me that the franchises are somewhat short, so what incentive is there for train operating companies to invest in stations?

David Scott (South Eastern Trains): Certainly from the point of view of security, it has been recognised at a very high level within our company that, if you make a pleasant environment, you bring more people on to the service, particularly off-peak, because, if you have an unpleasant, potentially crime-ridden environment, people will not travel. Therefore, it is very much, even in a short-term franchise, within the business interests of the company to improve things, and we do.

Mike Gibson (, South Eastern Trains): Just to pick up that, South Eastern Trains are chiefly a commuter railway. Most of our business is in peak hours. Our sole area to grow the business is the off-peak market. We have a number of leisure marketing initiatives to try to help us achieve that. All research indicates that people are put off travelling by train because of a dirty, run-down station, a lack of staff etc. That is primarily people mid-day, when there is no one there, and after dark. Basically, our incentive, even on a short franchise, is a commercial one, to get the extra business in.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): What about technology, like CCTV, for instance? If it is a relatively short franchise and you are investing in something like CCTV, you are effectively leasing that technology, are you not?

Mike Gibson (South Eastern Trains): The funding for our enhanced CCTV programme comes thanks to TfL, so, irrespective of who takes over the franchise, the new operators will take it on.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): Do you have a view, TfL?

Trevor Hill (TfL London Rail): Not specially. The point I would like to emphasise is the last one, that all the investment we are putting in to all the train companies is going to be carried on for its natural life cycle and contractual arrangements put in place to ensure that they are maintained within the new franchise contractual arrangements. Therefore, we will not get the situation where we have hundreds of cameras all over South Eastern Trains and the new franchise operator, which starts in April, will ignore them. It will be part of their contracts to maintain those and we will work with those people in the future to further upgrade.

David Scott (South Eastern Trains): It is probably worth mentioning just briefly, as well, that we have no obligation to put cameras on the trains. Every single new train that we buy has a very good CCTV system on board.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): What about smaller stations that do not have any staff? If we look at those for a moment. There is no ticket purchasing facility. They are not gated. People can come and go as they wish. What incentives are there to provide passenger safety at stations like that? What can you do?

Mike Gibson (South Eastern Trains): Obviously, I cannot talk for other train companies, but, in our Metro area, which is your patch, all our stations have a staff presence. If we are talking out in Kent, yes, but in the Greater London area, no.

David Scott (Head of Crime and Safety, South Eastern Trains): Those in Kent have trains with conductors on.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): Trains with conductors. TfL, do you have...

Trevor Hill (TfL London Rail): Yes. On South Eastern (Trains), I think that may well be the case, but across London there are many unstaffed stations. In the perception of the passenger, if that passenger turns up at, say, 8.00pm, then most stations, I guess, are unstaffed, because some of the booking offices shut at 7.30, 8.00pm. We need to be careful what, really, we mean by unstaffed stations. At 9.00, 10.00pm, nearly all of them are unstaffed, so we need to bear that in mind.

I think it is important to understand that, with the TfL investment we are putting in, which is about £7 or £8 million per annum for the last two years, on these sorts of issues, it is our intention that every passenger can talk to a member of staff through a passenger help point and be seen by control cameras, which are 24/7 monitored. That partly answers the question, but there are some unstaffed stations. For example, the Barking - Gospel Oak route on Silverlink Metro, which is, by definition, an unstaffed railway. It is a pay train route.

I think the only answer there is not necessarily to throw staff at the issue on the stations, because the levels of patronage are very low, but to provide a high-quality environment on the station. That does mean investment in things like integrated waiting accommodation, where it is heated, where you have ventilation in the summer, where you have CCTV both outside and within in the waiting room environment. Sliding doors so they are Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) compliant. You have information systems, PA systems and ticket sales facilities within that area. The route that passengers take from a street to that facility has to be well-lit. In other words, you have to provide an environment that is favourable to the passenger, that they perceive as being secure and provides interaction with a human being, albeit perhaps through a help point.

One final point. All of our help points that we are putting in at all our stations have a dedicated camera, so that as soon as the help point is pushed, the camera switches immediately on. Then, the camera operator can see and say things that will reassure the passenger that they can be seen. ‘Hello, madam’, ‘Hello, sir’, or ‘Can I help you, madam?’ and that sort of thing. They can actually be seen. Someone made the point about publicity. It is important that it is not just ‘throw these things at stations’. We have to actually tell people these things are at stations as well. That is a very, very important part of the process.

Elizabeth Howlett (Assembly Member): Very briefly, I just wanted to put in a word for women travelling and getting on and off unmanned stations. It is a really frightening experience, I have to say. CCTV is not a panacea. It is excellent for catching the culprit afterwards and getting them into court. That is super. However, at the actual time of any kind of an incident, it is not much good to help a lone woman at an unmanned station.

Hitherto, I have been link member for the MPA down in Bromley. I have to tell you I am no shrinking violet but I just did not like travelling from these various local stations, late at night after a meeting, back home. It is frightening and reassurance is definitely needed. The people who are vulnerable are women and young people. You know that. I am glad to hear TfL are taking these initiatives, but bear in mind that, at the instance, there is not much help there for a victim.

Trevor Hill (TfL London Rail): I cannot disagree with that. It is very important that market research tells you that, after staffing – I think I have already mentioned that it has to be the right type of staffing and what that staff actually does – the provision of high lux lighting is also very important. It is the second most important aspect after dark.

What we plan to do and what we are doing, in fact, on Silverlink, is that we put £2 million worth of additional police resources onto the Silverlink Metro routes this year, including PCSOs. They are targeted towards what I would call the late term, which is after about 3.00pm through to the end of service. Depending on what the agreement is as to the future of Silverlink Metro, we would hope that increasing the lighting levels substantially on every station would be a minimum requirement.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): I think that feeds very neatly into my question, which maybe does not get an answer today, but I think should form a part of our report on this. There may be a short answer, however. It is the extent to which security at stations and on trains is a franchise consideration and the extent to which that is actually given greater priority as a franchise consideration.

Mike Gibson (South Eastern Trains): These are questions, Chairman, for the Department for Transport.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): Yes, it certainly is, which is why I suspect there might not be an answer today. However, I know TfL comment on franchising in London and maybe have an observation on this. Certainly, I think we need to ask that question. Clearly, there is a tension here, because with ever increasing subsidies for rail operations, this might be seen as an additional cost, but, on the other hand, safety is something that should not be scrimped on.

Trevor Hill (TfL London Rail): You are quite right, TfL do comment on all the franchise bids that are put in, but the word is ‘comment’. We do comment and we make a point that we do wish to see better this, better that, better security, improved whatever. However, we are only one part of that process. The Silverlink process, if it does change, will lead TfL to have a greater input. In fact, we will have the decisive input over who would in future run the Silverlink Metro franchise. I think it is fair to say that the points I have been trying to make today would be very high up on our agenda.

Ian Johnson (BTP): During the life of the SRA, I put a Chief Inspector over there, specifically to encourage them down the route of including within the franchise agreement security requirements. They did, but they tended to get removed as the cost cutting process emerged. It is a matter I have raised with DfT, but I think it is certainly a matter that is worth revisiting.

I do have to say that the more recent franchise bidders, particularly for the South Eastern Trains franchise, were in to see us, talking to us about security arrangements, as part of their actual bid. Therefore, I think the climate is changing a bit around it, but I think some encouragement around requirements within the franchise would be very helpful.

Roger Evans (Chair): That is sort of reassuring. Murad (Qureshi), you have a question to give TfL an opportunity to talk about Silverlink.

Murad Qureshi (Assembly Member): Indeed. Trevor (Hill), if TfL are awarded the Silverlink franchise, can we expect yourselves to achieve the Secure Stations award across the whole of the line and the stations that you will incorporate? What kind of levels of staffing could we expect?

Trevor Hill (TfL London Rail): Two or three questions in there. To be fair to myself, I think we have to say ‘if’, because the decision, as far as I am aware, has not been made and certainly has not been announced. The Secure Stations award, as it currently stands, we think, whilst it has been improved recently, is not absolutely satisfactory for London. Part of the issue is that, if an award accreditation is not compulsory, then how do you measure one particular train company against another?

We would almost certainly not require, if this happens, the Silverlink stations to meet the current Secure Stations award process. We would want a different Secure Stations award process based on our minimum requirements for a station. I have mentioned several times today that that is 24/7 CCTV help points, lighting and other factors, which are in the brief that we have here. We would say that any successful bidder would have to meet, certainly, those minimum specifications before they then went on to provide whatever the market says they want.

Murad Qureshi (Assembly Member): Are you saying that TfL standards are higher? For example, on the Bakerloo line, which shares the tracks with Silverlink in Harrow and Brent, it is quite clear that, after Queen’s Park, the stations get pretty lousy. In those instances, are you saying what you have on the Bakerloo line is better than what you would have under the Secure Stations award?

Trevor Hill (TfL London Rail): What we are saying is that we believe, as a minimum specification, you should have 24/7 monitoring CCTV, if we concentrate on CCTV for a minute. This, you have heard, is digitally recorded to criminal evidence standard and has packages that you can provide for the BTP. If I am right, the Secure Stations award does not necessarily require that to become a Secure Station. We would therefore say that we would want that as a minimum requirement for our standards on the Silverlink Metro.

Steve Burton (TfL Transport and Policing Enforcement Directorate): From a TfL perspective, we are very supportive of the Secure Stations scheme, because any effort around security is very welcome. The scheme itself is designed nationally, but there are fundamental differences between a major interchange in London and an unstaffed station outside. We believe there are some differential standards that we would include in London.

It is not a very detailed standard, in some areas, around CCTV, as Trevor (Hill) said. There are some issues around staffing that, again, are not as explicit as they may be. It is a baby and bath water situation here. We are very supportive of it, but there may be specific London issues that we want to build in. While we would support it, Trevor Hill’s London Rail group are developing some specific issues for London that we would want to drive through any franchise, should any decisions be made in the future.

Murad Qureshi (Assembly Member): You are, nevertheless, making a commitment that, if you did get the franchise, we would get 24-hour, seven-day-a-week CCTV. On the staffing levels, I am not quite sure what you are saying.

Trevor Hill (TfL London Rail): That is because I have not said anything about staffing levels.

Murad Qureshi (Assembly Member): Your colleague started something…

Trevor Hill (TfL London Rail): A lot of this depends on how, actually, the market responds to our bid. I think it would be very fair to say that we would require additional staffing, as a general rule. I do not think it is confidential that, as part of this, we plan to install revenue protection gates at 10 stations on the Silverlink Metro. These are mostly on the North London line, although two are, I think, near Queen’s Park: Harlesden and Stonebridge Park.

They, by definition, have to be staffed, so I think we can safely assume that, at those 10 stations, we will have additional staffing and that that additional staffing will carry on right the way through the evening until the end of service. We believe that is very important, not just to collect revenue but to provide reassurance for passengers. In general terms, yes, there will be more staffing, but the detail will come out through the process.

Roger Evans (Chair): Can I thank you all for contributing? This brings us to the end of this session. We have gone over quite a lot and I think a lot of useful information was coming out, so it has been worthwhile. If we have any questions we want to follow up on, then our officers will be in touch for further details. You have made a couple of commitments to provide us with more information at a later date. Thank you for your contribution to the Committee. You may leave us now and watch us from the public gallery, if you wish.

Appendix B

Transcript of Item 6 – Public Carriage Office

Roger Evans (Chair): Can I ask the witnesses from the PCO to come and join us now? Whilst the gentlemen are coming down here, Peter (Hulme Cross), can I ask you to just briefly introduce the report and propose it for adoption by the Committee?

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): Yes, thank you very much, Chair. As you know, the PCO used to come under the jurisdiction of the police, but, since 2000, it has come under the jurisdiction of the Mayor, really, as part of TfL. It is now becoming part of an integrated transport system. We felt that it was timely for the Committee to have a look at the operations of the PCO, to see how it is carrying out its functions, and the report that we have produced is the result of that. We have taken evidence from quite a number of parties, including a lot of written evidence from individual taxi drivers. The report concentrates not just on how things are now, but the way that we see things evolving in the future. I would like to present it to the Committee and move that the Committee accepts it.

Roger Evans (Chair): Thank you, Peter (Hulme Cross). A little remiss of me, I should have told everyone this is item 6 on the agenda, for those of you who are following along with us. The proposal is that we accept the report. Is everyone agreed to that?

John Biggs (Assembly Member): I suppose, academically, I do not have a problem with the precise wording of the report. What I am hesitant about, and it is the matter of the lobby today as well, is this question of implying that we want to liberalise the Knowledge. I do not have any problem at all with the Knowledge being scrutinised and possibly changed in some ways to meet the capabilities of modern technology or changed nature of roads in London or whatever.

I suppose I have the advantage of being on the Assembly for five years now, as have you, Roger (Evans). We are aware that this is a very contentious issue within the trade, but there are some genuine concerns about the way in which the market for taxis operates in London. If the Knowledge is revised, there is a risk of jeopardising the quality of the product in London and also, if you were to only liberalise the flow of drivers into the trade, of messing up the way in which the market operates in London. Although there is no formal limit on the number of taxi drivers in London, there is an implicit brake, if you like, through the Knowledge system, which does seem to operate moderately well at the moment.

I have fears that, if there was a massive flood of drivers onto the market in London, particularly at a time of economic downturn – which, of course, will happen without a doubt in the event of there being a Tory Government in the future, but that could happen in untoward circumstances in other times – that there would be severe problems for Londoners with a trade that is oversupplied with drivers.

Roger Evans (Chair): I think that, notwithstanding the political comment, you have raised a point that all of us would agree on. The report does say we would liberalise the Knowledge.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): Can I make it quite clear, Chair, that the report does not recommend any change in the syllabus of the Knowledge, in what is taught, and it explicitly states that there should be no reduction in the standard that is achieved at all. What we have said in the report is that the way of testing it could be looked at differently. We are not saying that anything is broken, or necessarily needs fixing. We are saying that the way of testing it is not commensurate with modern methods of testing and could be looked at. However, I would like to leave that until the end of our discussion, when we will have a longer time to examine it, if we may.

Roger Evans (Chair): I hope that that is sufficient to reassure the Committee. Are we happy to approve the report? [Agreed]

John Biggs (Assembly Member): That was a very dignified retreat.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): It is not a retreat at all. It is a response to you trying to pre-empt the discussion, John.

Roger Evans (Chair): It is an important issue to raise here. After all, we were actually approving the report, so there is no reason why we should not discuss it at this stage. However, what we actually have now is witnesses from the PCO, to discuss some of the recommendations here. Obviously, this does not form a part of the report, because you have already been asked to contribute, along with other users. However, it would be interesting, I thought, to hear what you have to say.

The Committee was quite keen to have you in front of them, because we do not get to see the PCO very often. It is a good opportunity for you to inform the Committee about your work and to react to some of the things that were said here.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): Yes, thank you, Chair. The PCO, since it has come under the Mayor as part of TfL, has become a more strategic body. It also has the responsibility of implementing Mayoral policy, which adds a political dimension to it. I would like to go through the recommendations in the order in which they are printed in the executive summary of the report, which starts on page two. I think that that is probably the easiest way, because, if everybody has a copy of the report, then we can simply follow it fairly easily.

In the first recommendation, under the section that is headed ‘Restructuring the PCO’, we have drawn attention to the fact that the PCO is setting the standards, namely regulating, and enforcing the standards, namely delivering a service. In particular, an example of that is the testing of vehicles, where the PCO says what needs to be tested and how the vehicles should be. It actually carries out that testing itself at the premises in Penton Street. We feel that, as a publicly accountable body, these functions should be separated in some way. You should not be setting the standards – that is, regulating – and then enforcing them as well.

Ed Thompson (Taxis and Private Hire Director, Public Carriage Office): First of all, can I say we do not get out much, so we welcomed the chance to come and talk you, and we welcomed the enquiry as well. On that point of the PCO since it has been part of a big transport planning authority – we are still a regulator, but we are part of a strategic planning authority, as you point out – we do keep an eye out for, I guess, what we would call conflicts of interest.

The way we have been addressing that recently is that we are restructuring ourselves within PCO to separate those two strands that you mentioned just now. I think it would be unusual for a licensing authority… We are not aware of an example elsewhere in the country where the licensing authority does not perform both tasks. We do not think it is too unusual for us to do both tasks. However, we do want more clarity within the organisation in terms of one partner on that. We have had overlaps hitherto and we are unravelling them for the future.

On the particular example of vehicle testing, you probably know that, when private hire vehicle testing became part of our licensing role, that was outsourced to a commercial provider. That has been going pretty well. It has been running for just over a year now. When that happened, we started looking at the position on taxis, and we are very near the end of that process. We cannot share anything specific with you at the moment, but we are essentially considering what the Committee was suggesting. Can I ask my colleague, Roy Ellis, if he would care to add anything to that?

Roy Ellis (Head of the Public Carriage Office): The only point I would add is that there are over 300 licensing authorities in the country. I think, probably without exception, they do have the dual role of setting the standards and enforcing those standards. I do not think in any way we are out of step there. Looking at the Knowledge testing process…

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): Can we come onto the Knowledge later? We can discuss that more fully at the end, if we go through the other recommendations, and then we will have more time to do that one.

One thing that I thought I might just mention is you have only one testing station, at Penton Street. It might be advantageous to the drivers if they could go to more testing stations, which were, perhaps, dotted around London. Rather than coming in, if they live in the suburbs, all the way to Penton Street and then queuing up for some considerable time, they would be able to get tested at different points.

Roy Ellis (PCO): In the past, there were several satellite stations and the decision was subsequently made to bring them all together at Penton Street. As a result of that decision, though, the taxi trade generally has structured itself such that Penton Street is currently convenient to them. In fact, 91 of the 141 garages that submit taxis for inspection are currently located within five miles of Penton Street. That is not to say that satellite stations would not be beneficial to some, and we recognise that, and that is being considered as part of Best Value review, the outcome of which will be announced shortly.

You made a comment, which I may just pick up on, about vehicles queuing. The vast majority of our inspections are by appointment. The queuing is in respect of a relatively small number. It may perhaps be the perception that people are having to queue for hours, but in fact the vast majority of vehicles attending our premises do so by appointment.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): Let me go on to the next point. The taxi trade has some unique points of view and we do not feel that it is represented as it should be on the Board of TfL. We would like to see some representation of the point of view of the taxi trade on the Board of TfL. I would not expect that you would disagree with that, but would you have a comment to make?

Ed Thompson (PCO): It is an important industry, as is the licensed private hire industry, now. It is a big industry in London. However, I would say that is a matter for the Mayor.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): It is a matter for the Mayor and the Government, but, at the moment, the taxi trade does not have a voice at that level.

Roger Evans (Chair): I suspect, Peter, it is slightly unfair to ask them that question. It is down to the Mayor to make that decision, but the point is well made.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): Let us move on to the next one, then. We also felt that the taxi trade itself was somewhat fragmented in its response. There does not seem to be any one body that speaks for the taxi trade. There are a number of different bodies and they give different messages and frequently score points off one another. There used to be a Board that could lobby on behalf of the taxi industry, but it seems to be somewhat fragmented. We would like to see the London Taxi Board put back together, if that was possible. That might not be a matter for you, necessarily, but you might have a view.

Roy Ellis (PCO): Yes. The London Taxi Board still exists, but it is not fully representative of the taxi trade. We would very much welcome having a single body that we could discuss taxi industry issues with. If the various organisations found that it was possible for them to rejoin, if they have not rejoined, we would welcome that. We would welcome the single source of contact.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): This actually overlaps with another point, about communication, which we are coming onto in a minute. It is obviously easier, in a way, to communicate with an organisation rather than individuals. I am going to come onto that in a minute, under communications.

Let me move on to the next one, which is just to make the point, really, that you have taken on the licensing of the private hire industry, which is some 40,000 odd vehicles. That is a huge task and also a huge responsibility. That is roughly double the number of black cabs, in fact. One of the recommendations that we have made with regard to this is that the Committee might like to come back to this issue later on, to examine how successful the licensing of the private hire industry has been and how successful it has been in driving the touts, the illegal drivers, off the road. It is a decision for the Committee, but…

Roger Evans (Chair): I am sure the Committee will take a view on that in due course, but I think it might be appropriate for you to give us just an update on where you are with private hire licensing.

Ed Thompson (PCO): With pleasure. As Mr Hulme Cross says, it was a very challenging task. We have sat in front of a previous Committee within the GLA before and talked about how we were approaching it.

Roger Evans (Chair): That was some years ago, though, was it not?

Ed Thompson (PCO): A little while ago, yes. Just to remind people of what the phases were, the legislation came in 1998. The PCO was given the task to do the licensing. There were choices – it could have possibly been open to other local authorities. Operator licensing started in 2001 and was all but complete by 2003.

Then, we started driver licensing in 2003. We are about two-thirds of the way through that now. About 24,000 private hire drivers are now licensed, which, as a milestone, is somewhere near the number of licensed taxi drivers there are in London. That has been quite a difficult task, but we can go over, perhaps, the reasons for that at some later date.

Private hire vehicles, as we said before, that was put out to a third-party service provider and that seems to have gone pretty well. April of this year was the first full year of private hire driver licensing. You now can recognise a licensed private hire vehicle by the yellow disc that you will see in the front and rear windscreens. Now that they are all done, we are gradually publicising that. The drivers are not all done yet, so we are perhaps a little bit ambivalent about going the whole hog on it. It will be nice when we have everything in place next year. I guess I would say that we are reasonably happy with the way things are going at the moment.

As regards touts, there are overlapping issues. General transport supply late at night, or private hire taxi supply late at night, is perhaps an overlapping issue there. The colleagues you had in front of you before, some of them are engaged in that directly. We are somewhat indirect. However, there has been a lot of progress made. I think the Safer Travel at Night project is a very important one. The main stats that we look at for the whole project is the number of serious sexual assaults on people, mainly women. That figure has gone down from about 18 to 10 over the last two or three years. Making some progress, I think, but as usual lots more to do.

Roger Evans (Chair): I have to say, on the whole business of touts, the way I measure it is how many people there are offering me unofficial lifts home when I go out in the West End on a Saturday night, on the rare occasions I do. That number does not seem to have decreased at all. It seems to have gone up, if anything.

Ed Thompson (PCO): I think our colleagues in TfL are trying to measure some of this. More importantly, perhaps, we are measuring the number of people and the number of women who are actually using the touts’ services. I agree it is quite a difficult one. It would take quite a bit of police resource to eradicate it completely. I guess what we want to do is to get rid of the worst problems that arise from the tout problem.

Darren Johnson (Assembly Member): If it were easier to get a black cab at that time of night, the market would diminish to almost zero.

Ed Thompson (PCO): I agree, and that is the reason why we have put the Cranbourn Street rank in central London. We are looking at other marshalled ranks elsewhere, because we know that taxi drivers like the marshalled rank. It makes them feel a bit more secure. Certainly, it is a place where passengers can go and be marshalled into a cab. We would like to do that. Through December, we have added Thursdays to that. We are doing a bit more of it.

Roger Evans (Chair): We will talk about marshalling a bit later. There is a specific recommendation here.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): We will come on to marshalling a little bit later, because we are very supportive of that.

Ed Thompson (PCO): Licensing per se does not address touting, my colleague is reminding me.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): I am reluctant to interrupt Peter Hulme Cross’ flow of consciousness, but on private hire, I am wondering what success you have had with the general enforcement. We talk about touting, of course, which is a big issue, but enforcement against illegal operators, unauthorised vehicles and unfit vehicles and so on. Can you give us some stats on that, or some general measure of whether you are up to…?

Ed Thompson (PCO): We do not have stats, but we could provide stats on that later on. We have revoked operators’ licenses and revoked drivers’ licenses in the past year. Our licensing officers, who are out and about, can identify illegal operators. We take them to court for operating without a license. I am sorry we do not have the stats, but we could provide those. There is a quite a lot going on.

Roger Evans (Chair): Do you have targets?

Roy Ellis (PCO): No, we do not have targets. It is not our intention to set a target for the number of licenses we want to suspend or revoke or the number of operators that we want to take to court, of course. What we are seeking to achieve through compliance activity is to ensure that all those who are licensed are complying with the various requirements of the licensing regime.

The importance, I think we need to stress, of the licensing project has been to ensure that those operators, drivers and vehicles that are licensed are clearly identified. Licensing in itself does not address the issue of touting. It is there to ensure that, if you are aware that a vehicle is licensed, that the driver is licensed, that the operator is licensed, you are safe if you use those services. If you use services other than those, then you do not have that assurance. You are not likely to be covered by the vehicle insurance and the like.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): Can I just follow this up, briefly? If you have an illegal operator, then you can take them to court. Can you actually or have you followed them through to the point where you close them down or take injunctions against them?

Roy Ellis (PCO): Yes.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): Are you doing that on a regular basis?

Roy Ellis (PCO): We are doing that as the need arises, yes. However, as I say, we are still in very much the early stage of licensing. If it is reasonable to do so, we will encourage those operators to adopt the appropriate standards. We do not want to decimate the private hire trade. Wherever possible, we are trying to bring them up to the standard that we require. However, if need be, yes, we will suspend, we will revoke their license, we will end up with them being closed down.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): Are you getting sufficient support and priority from the police in your enforcement?

Roy Ellis (PCO): Yes. We are comfortable with the support that we are getting from the transport police and the like.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): It makes a very useful minute. I would like to see some statistics off the back of this, Chair.

Ed Thompson (PCO): Mr Evans, we have an implied target, I suppose, it occurs to me. We would like 100% of private operators to be licensed. If we find an operator that is not licensed, we try to close them down to get our implied target, I suppose.

Elizabeth Howlett (Assembly Member): The MPS themselves are doing, actually, quite a lot of work undercover in this area. I am a magistrate and I have sat in court with a few in front of me. They go straight off the road. You revoke the license and we take away their driving license.

Ed Thompson (PCO): Yes. You will have seen some of our colleagues in front of you, I think. It is quite a powerful combination.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): It would be useful, also, Chair, to hear about complaints. Presumably, now it is licensed, members of the public are making regular complaints to you and you will be telling us how you are dealing with those.

Roy Ellis (PCO): Because the arrangement within private hire is slightly different from taxis, in the first instance, complaints in respect of private hire drivers are referred to the operator concerned for the operator to resolve the issues. That is slightly different, where in the taxi trade you do not have the same relationship with operators. We would normally expect all complaints to go to the operators.

If a member of the public is not satisfied with the response from the operator, then we will certainly look into it. If it is a complaint against an operator as such, again, we will look into it. We try to do it by exception. Our compliance officers, when making inspections of private hire operators’ premises, do check the complaints register, to see that complaints are being recorded and resolved, where possible.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): We have mentioned communication with the public, for example Safer Travel at Night, which is ongoing. We fully support it and we think that is very good. However, there is communication with the industry itself and with individual taxi drivers, which we do not think is as good as it might be, to put it mildly.

Where there are organisations, you seem to be able to communicate well, but with individual taxi drivers, who are self-employed businessmen, for the most part, the communication is not very good. We would like to see an improvement in this area. We would like to see more use of the website. We would like to see more use of email, because a lot of people have email and it is very easy to get email nowadays. Any other ways of improving communications, we would like to see.

Ed Thompson (PCO): Yes, I think the Committee is correct on this. We could do much better on this. We have about 100,000 licensees, now, all told, if you include all the different kinds of licensees, not just drivers. Hitherto, it has been quite difficult to communicate with them.

What we intend to do now is to try to harvest email addresses for as many of our licensees as possible, so every PCO notice could go out to every licensee, in principle. We have counted, somewhat, on the taxi trade press and the private hire press to get messages out. As you say, there are people who will never see that and we are not so good on it. The website has been developing, as it is part of TfL’s general website. Licensees are able to do that now.

I think the Committee was quite right when it said we do need a communications strategy. We will be sending out some newsletters before the end of this financial year. As part of that, we will be inviting licensees to send their email address to a particular email address. That will be a start. We accept that we need to get on with this and do more of it. I think we have no complaint with your conclusions.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): Alright, yes. PCO notices in particular need to be…

Ed Thompson (PCO): Very useful to licensees, yes.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): We would also like to see you subscribe to a performance charter, as with the rest of TfL, that if somebody writes in to you, they will get a reply within a certain time. If somebody phones in, they will get somebody responding to them. We would like to see service level agreements within the PCO, in line with TfL.

Ed Thompson (PCO): We agree with that. We try to do it. We do not always succeed, but we do try to do that. Phone calls are particularly difficult if they are just phone calls about general issues. Anybody who is calling in about licensing, getting their license and things like that, we like to try to do that first. There is a lot of pressure on our staff. It is not always easy for us to give the quick responses that we would like.

There is a lot going on in the PCO at the moment, as you know. We are a relatively small senior management team. It is not just Roy and me, there are others, but there is quite a lot to do, both at the senior management level and at the staff level. That sounds like a feeble excuse, but we do have it on our programme. We will clear away a couple of fairly major things over the next couple of months and then I think we want to get on to things like this.

Roy Ellis (PCO): We do have a new telephone system, which means we can monitor better, now the extent to which telephone calls are being answered and to which calls are not being answered. It also enables enquiries to get through to the area of responsibility more quickly. We are hoping to see some improvements from that. We do attempt to respond to all correspondence within 10 days.

Roger Evans (Chair): Is that a reasonable target, given the pressures you are under?

Roy Ellis (PCO): It is difficult to deliver, on occasions. The particular pressure we have at the moment is that, because we are going though the final stages of private hire driver licensing, it means that we have invited a large number of temporary permit holder drivers to apply now for their substantive license. That is causing a vast amount of correspondence to come in at the moment. A lot of enquiries, generally. That makes it difficult to stick to those targets, but we do try our best to maintain those targets.

Roger Evans (Chair): Ideally, surely, an initiative like that should be separate to your day-to-day business of communicating with the drivers.

Roy Ellis (PCO): We have got additional resources to cope with this on-take of new licensees. I think it is probably worth saying that, as far as private hire licensing as a whole is concerned, that has been resourced specifically for that task. It has not detracted from our ability to service the taxi trade or to perform any of the other functions that we have.

Roger Evans (Chair): It is not a problem, then. In the future, what is a reasonable time of response? What would you be happy to commit to?

Roy Ellis (PCO): As far as correspondence is concerned, I would, for the moment, be looking to maintain the 10 days. I would like to see us hitting that target a little more often before we seek to reduce it.

Roger Evans (Chair): Is that a holding response or a proper response?

Roy Ellis (PCO): Certainly, there must be at least an acknowledgement well within that period, and updates if there is a substantial period before the final response can be given.

Ed Thompson (PCO): As you know, substantive responses, depending on the enquiry, can take… We send four-page letters, full of detail, and it is quite difficult. We do not want to fob people off, but sometimes it is very difficult. It is not just time pressure, it is the technical nature of the enquiry. If we do better with our general communications strategy, then I guess we would be reducing the amount of ad hoc enquiries, either via email, letter or telephone. Therefore, there is a payoff for us there, as well, if we can do better on the general communications.

Roger Evans (Chair): I think we appreciate it might take time to carry out an investigation and come back with a full response, but whilst you are doing that people are waiting. This is their business and they certainly deserve a response that says, ‘We have received your correspondence’.

Ed Thompson (PCO): That I think we can guarantee, yes.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): I think also, if there is an issue that has to be consulted on, then that needs to be done as widely as possible with as much lead time as possible. We have heard complaints in this area also. John Biggs (Assembly Member): Marshalled ranks.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): Marshalled ranks, yes. This has warmed the cockles of John (Biggs)’s heart, here. We would like to see more of these marshalled ranks, I think, and the PCO taking steps to liase with other organisations on where they might be sited. I know there is one that has become permanent in Cranbourn Street. I noticed that there was a new one in Kingston. I think there is one in Bromley. We think that this could be extended, where possible.

Ed Thompson (PCO): Yes. I think this is very important. It is the kind of new initiative that, now that the PCO is part of the transport planning authority, we can address in a more holistic way.

Cranbourn Street, you are correct, is permanent, so there is one place in central London, at least, where people can go and wait and get a cab. The other benefit is that cab drivers who are on their last trip home, who might not wish to take somebody 10 miles in the wrong direction, can go there and the marshal can help them get somebody in the right direction, match them up. Kingston is just a December feature. We are also working with Croydon Council to see if we can do something there, either with taxis or private hire pick-up. Bromley is an experiment with the local authority, and we would like to do more of this.

Funding is always going to be an issue. We have managed to sustain the funding for the ones that you have already mentioned. I am intending to put a not outrageous bid in future budget

programmes to do a bit more of this. You could look at a vision where every town centre has some sort of safe haven, or marshalled rank, or marshalled pick-up point, in every town centre. However, resources are constrained everywhere.

I think what these marshalled ranks have proved is that they are popular with drivers and popular with the public. They do provide a safe haven for Safer Travel initiatives as well. We probably would like to do more, so I think it is probably one of the new things we would like to see developed.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): With late-night licensing coming in, I think this is particularly important at this stage.

Ed Thompson (PCO): We would like to work with local authorities quite a bit on this, because it is a localised thing. They know their areas and the local police know them better than we do, so we would like to collaborate with them and perhaps collaborate on the funding if possible.

Roger Evans (Chair): I get the impression members are all saying, ‘our area, too’, here.

Darren Johnson (Assembly Member): This is about central London. Marshalled ranks sound really good in theory, about matching late at night, early morning, matching the driver up with the passenger so they are going the right way on the last journey home and so on. However, someone I spoke to recently has, three times, in the early hours on a Friday, tried to get a cab to Kilburn from the marshalled rank. He was told that he had not a hope in hell and to go and stand out in the main road and try to flag a cab down. Three times on the run. He ended up getting an illegal minicab, an unlicensed minicab, because he could not find a black cab. I think that is a very, very common tale. I think people want to get a proper, licensed cab, but so often are just forced into unlicensed minicabs because the service is not there.

Ed Thompson (PCO): I think we accept that late-night supply is difficult. I am not sure if Kilburn has a specific problem, because maybe not many licensed cab drivers live there and therefore not many are on their way home at that time of night.

Darren Johnson (Assembly Member): If it is a transport service, you have to provide a transport service to different parts of London, not just where cab drivers happen to live in the East End.

Ed Thompson (PCO): Yes. I accept that, because we cannot regulate or plan, unlike bus routes, where and when cab drivers work, it is difficult for us to provide the same level of service everywhere. We do talk to our friends in the taxi trade about some of this. We advertise in the taxi press sometimes. The fare premium was raised for journeys after 10.00pm, and that helped a bit as well. It is something over which we do not have full control.

I guess, as TfL, we want to say, ‘What is the collective transport service to everywhere in London?’, including Kilburn. Are the bus services okay there as well? Is there enough private hire? We have the new private hire texting service as well. Of course, there is quite a peak round about midnight, 1.00am, I am told. Lots of people want to go home at the same time. However, we do accept that. Any suggestions and ideas on how to do better are welcome. We think we can encourage more drivers to go out, partly because of these marshalled ranks. Perhaps if we had more, we would get more drivers out and about.

Murad Qureshi (Assembly Member): Just a comment, actually, how few taxi ranks we have generally, certainly in central London, and particularly on the big developments, like the one we are in now, More London. It does not actually have one. It could easily have one. Places like Canary Wharf. I think it is actually a planning issue.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): It has.

Murad Qureshi (Assembly Member): Has it? I did not think it had. I am always being corrected by John (Biggs). I just think we should pursue it in the London Plan. It is an obvious thing that has been missed out for some reason, both locally and pan-London.

Geoff Pope (Deputy Chair): You mentioned Kingston, which is a big hotspot for teenagers right through the middle of the night. I am glad to see there is some kind of trial. Why is it not going to be continued after December, because it is a 365-day a year thing in Kingston?

Ed Thompson (PCO): I personally would like to see more of these continuous, but we do not have budget for this at the moment. We found some money for December. If it proves successful, and then if we can develop the funding, then… If there is a public demand, we as TfL should be trying to meet that demand for transport.

Can I just answer Mr Qureshi’s point? I think there was an informal rank at the other end of the diagonal, where lots of taxis dropped off and maybe stayed around and then went the other way. We are trying to put in a formal one, I think on the other side of the road.

Roy Ellis (: It is being appointed.

Ed Thompson (PCO): There is an official rank to be appointed there quite soon. Taxi ranks are very important.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): I wanted to put a slight brake on this marshalled rank idea. I think they are fantastic things where there is a big demand. However, as I understand it, the taxi trade is intended to be self-financing, in that the licenses, paid by drivers, which come out of the fares collected by drivers, fund the service. If we have marshalled ranks everywhere where everyone wants them, that will hit the bottom line and the fares would have to go up as a consequence.

I think the sensible answer is that we want to have marshalled ranks in places where there is a big demand for them and where it really makes sense. It might be an aspiration to have them on street corners everywhere. Maybe they should be funded through Safety Partnerships, for example, if there is a place where there is a particular issue. I would be wary of banging it on the fares.

Ed Thompson (PCO): Given that it is a scarce resource that we are allocating for marshalling, I think you are right. We have to make sure we are getting the most value for money out of whatever we spend.

Elizabeth Howlett (Assembly Member): Just to say you have lifted the restriction on suburban taxi drivers being able to work in central London. That is happening at Tooting, Balham and Clapham, which is my patch. I think that is an excellent idea. If central London taxi drivers have earned enough for the day, let suburban ones come in and work in the patch. That is an excellent idea.

Ed Thompson (PCO): That principle is unimpeachable. If the all-London drivers do not want to work in an area and choose to go elsewhere, and you can extend it to the suburban drivers, yes, let us do it. We are talking to the trade about this, because we have to be a bit careful. We do not want to be unfair to the all-London drivers, but I think the ones you mentioned, especially Clapham Common, all of a sudden you have a taxi service there that was not there before. We are working with the trade to find more opportunities to do that.

Roger Evans (Chair): This is clearly an issue that has engaged the Committee and maybe we will come back to it at some point in the future. The next section is the Knowledge bit.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): Could I ask a question, because we are going to spend some time debating this, about the emissions issue? It is mentioned in the report, but there is no conclusion on it. It has been an important and contentious issue. I wonder if you can just quickly update us on where we are with that.

Roy Ellis (PCO): The current situation is that there are currently field trials being undertaken on a number of technologies, with the intention of establishing whether those technologies continue to deliver the Euro 3 emissions level under normal working conditions. We are awaiting the interim results of those trials, and that will indicate the extent to which they are successful.

It is worth mentioning that we are still being approached by technology providers and the like with alternative systems that may contribute to implementing the Mayor’s Taxi Emissions Strategy. We will be continuing to accommodate them as best we can. The end result should be that taxi drivers or taxi owners have as many choices as possible, such that they can meet the Euro 3 level according to the timescale that has been set down.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): Do you think there is a likelihood of further slippage in the timescale?

Roy Ellis (PCO): Until we get the interim results of these field trials, I do not think it is possible to say. We will obviously be looking at those very carefully to make sure that it is a deliverable strategy as it currently stands.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): Just as a corollary to that, do you think that the cost of these systems… In our Committee, we found that a sum of £2,500 to £3,000 was mentioned. Is that cost likely to come down, or is that a figure that we can take to go forward?

Roy Ellis (PCO): I think we will find that the technology providers will be in a fairly competitive market and they will wish to keep their cost as low as possible to maintain the competitive edge. Until the testing has been finalised and the systems go into production, it is probably difficult to specify precisely what the cost will be. However, the supplement to the fares that has already been implemented is already contributing to funding the cost of having these systems fitted.

We are hopeful that there will be an economic solution that drivers can manage, but again, I would mention that we want to have as many options as possible available to the drivers. There are so many different permutations within the taxi trade. Some drivers are retiring. Some drivers are thinking of changing their vehicles. Some drivers work part-time. Some, therefore, may want to buy a new taxi. Some may want to buy a newer taxi. What we want to do is to make available as many options as possible.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): It does affect the residual value of the vehicle. If a vehicle is worth £6,000, for example, and it does not have any emissions equipment fitted, and it costs £3,000 to fit that, it immediately slashes the residual value by about £3,000.

Roy Ellis (PCO): I think where there is a potential benefit is that, by fitting the emissions equipment, the residual value of that cab could well rise again. There could well be demand from provincial areas for ex-London taxis that have been fitted with emissions reduction equipment. I think it is very difficult to say, at this time, what the impact of fitting or not fitting this equipment will be on residual values.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): Is it worth asking also, because it is not another recommendation, where we are with conditions of fitness? This has been another contentious and protracted issue.

Roger Evans (Chair): We will come back to that when we have cleared up the report and I will bring you in.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): Let us talk a little bit about the Knowledge, therefore. London taxi drivers are renowned for the Knowledge and we do not want that to change. It is world- renowned that London taxi drivers know where they are going and that it is safe to get in a black cab. You will get to your destination.

However, the way that the Knowledge is tested, we have reservations about. We feel that it is not transparent. There is a lack of an appeals process. If the student gets knocked back, he cannot really appeal. He just has to take it on the chin, if he thinks he has grounds to appeal. There is no record of the content of the appearances.

Just to recap, the student gets the Blue Book, the 320 runs that he has to learn in a block. Then, he is tested with multiple appearances, once he has done that. Those appearances are on a one-to-one basis with an examiner, where there is no recording taken. There is no actual record of what happens during that appearance. If the student is dissatisfied, there is no appeals procedure. He just has to go on and on and on.

We feel that the way of testing it is not transparent and not really accountable. We feel that, for a body as you are now, which is publicly accountable, this method of testing should be revised and brought more into the present day.

Roy Ellis (PCO): My first response to that would be that we have always been publicly accountable. Whatever our parent body has, we have been accountable in the same way as that parent body has been. We remain publicly accountable, and we accept that.

The examinations systems of appearances, I believe the report suggests that it is out of date and not common practice at the moment. If I could just mention two examples – music exams and language exams are often done on a one-to-one basis. There are parallels there.

As far as the actual transparency of the system is concerned, the system has been updated significantly over the last 10 years. The current marking system is much more transparent than the system that existed when I first went to the PCO. It is a flexible system and it is documented. Each appearance has a marking sheet, where the points asked are noted and the mark in respect of each particular question is noted. I accept that they are not recorded on audio tape or video tape, but a documentary record is made and that is available to an individual if he wishes to see it. In fact, we have considered actually issuing that marking sheet to the individuals, but that is not something that we have resolved at this stage.

There is an appeals process. If an individual is not content with the marking that has been received or the progress that they are making, they can appeal to the Senior Knowledge of London Examiner. If they feel that is a bit too incestuous or whatever the relationship, they can appeal to us, Ed or myself. We will refer it to the senior manager who has responsibility above the Senior Knowledge of London Examiner to investigate that particular appearance or that particular individual’s progress.

I also would not want to give the impression that each candidate sees only one examiner. We recognise that sometimes one candidate may not like a particular examiner or vice versa. To ensure that that does not prejudice that candidate’s progress, each student will see each examiner during the course of their progress through the Knowledge. We seek to ensure that there is no bias in that respect, that they are not disadvantaged by one examiner not liking them or vice versa. The marking system, as I say, is open and published and their marking sheets, if they wish to see them, they can see them.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): Do you feel that, because it is a bit of a closed shop that you have, a student who wants to appeal will probably not do so because he feels that he will be blacklisted by the organisation as a result?

Roy Ellis (PCO): I have heard that suggestion in the past, it is true, and I recognise that there is the perception, perhaps, by some students, that this would be the case. We continually give the assurance that that is not the case, but it is very difficult to actually persuade the individuals that we are actually telling the truth. I cannot understand it myself, but still. They can appeal if they wish to do so, and some individuals do.

The other point that perhaps we should mention at this stage is that we are actively pursuing accreditation by an external accreditation authority. We want to ensure that our systems are open and transparent, that they do fulfil the requirements of a modern testing system and that they are fully endorsed by an independent authority. We are actively pursuing that at the moment.

Roger Evans (Chair): Who will be doing that?

Roy Ellis (PCO): We have not yet selected the authority. We have a meeting arranged for next week with one authority. I believe it is City & Guilds. I am not sure. We wanted to try to get more than one body to consult with, to see which one will fit the bill best. Certainly, we want to have this external accreditation, to try to dispel some of the myths that we believe surround it, but also to make absolutely sure that our systems are right and proper. We do not want to perpetuate unfair bias, unreasonable, prejudicial or any other sort of inappropriate situation. We want an independent body to come in and say, ‘What you are doing is right’ or ‘You should alter it in this respect’. We will certainly be pursuing that.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): I think we would be interested to know the results of that. However, where you have an auditor sitting in on an examination with a teacher and student, both of those are going to be on their best behaviour, are they not?

Roy Ellis (PCO): Yes. The other balance that we have in place is that we do monitor the grades awarded by each Knowledge of London examiner to ensure that there is a degree of consistency. Bearing in mind the cross-section of candidates that are appearing, we would expect a normal distribution curve of marks, so that there would be a small number of As, a few more Bs, a few more Cs and likewise. We do look at each examiner’s markings. There is a degree of moderation applied there, to ensure that there is consistency between the individuals. The Senior Knowledge of London Examiner does sit in – although I accept the point that you make – on appearances to assess them. Another thought we have is to try to do a further bit of moderation perhaps by tape recording one appearance and then getting all the examiners to independently mark that appearance to see whether we have, again, a good equality of standards.

Elizabeth Howlett (Assembly Member): That is a very good idea.

Roger Evans (Chair): It sounds like there are some good thoughts here, actually.

Murad Qureshi (Assembly Member): A few questions. The parallel I make is with your driving test. When I passed it, I just had to turn up on the day. Thankfully, in my case, the driving test guy was in a good mood and let me pass first time.

Angie Bray (Assembly Member): The best ones always fail first and then get passed second go.

Murad Qureshi (Assembly Member): That is what basically happened.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): And you did not crash.

Angie Bray (Assembly Member): Darren (Johnson), do you drive at all?

Darren Johnson (Assembly Member): I have not taken the test, no.

Murad Qureshi (Assembly Member): The reality is, now, that there is a written examination. I think we are all the better for drivers understanding the engine and the mechanics and what have you of the vehicle. That shows clearly how things move. Even with musical instruments, it is not just playing the musical instrument. You also have to do written exams.

What I am saying is that, actually, it is not just the test, it is also the way you actually acquire the Knowledge and that process. Whilst you have gone for the accreditation, the other option is obviously going out, maybe, possibly, with NVQs or even a degree. If it is going to take me four years, I would want some piece of paper at the end of it and if there was a ceremony thrown in, even better. I just think the way things are taught in today’s world is different from when the Knowledge was first set up. If cabbies can get a degree along the way, why not? Can you just enlighten me where you are on that, because I think that is another part of it that does need to be investigated?

Roy Ellis (PCO): One point I would make, there is a small ceremony. If you regard me presenting them with their badges as a ceremony, then that is what they get.

Murad Qureshi (Assembly Member): I was thinking about the Mayor.

Roy Ellis (PCO): The Mayor would be more impressive, I grant you, but he might not be as available. As far as the process is concerned, we try to accommodate individuals of a vast range of abilities, aptitudes and commitments. We are trying to allow everyone to progress at the fastest speed that they can. Some people, because of their commitments, will not be able to devote as much time and effort to it as others, and may therefore make slower progress. If that is what their circumstances require, then we will accommodate that.

If there are others who have more time and can do it quicker, fine. We will accommodate that. As a demonstration of that, we have recently introduced what we call a double A grade, which means that an exceptional candidate can actually progress exceedingly quickly. They only need one appearance on each of the three main stages to move on to the next stage. We have abolished the very bottom grade accordingly. Therefore, we are recognising that people want to progress at a time of their choosing, effectively.

Some time ago we did have a system where we automatically gave 28-day appearances. We found that the students themselves found it too much pressure and opted out of that experiment. We are considering another trial, which, again, would allow a slightly more modular approach. It will be interesting to see whether that suits some candidates better than others or whether it suits all of them. There may be a pattern for the future.

Another point also worth making is that it is not necessarily because you are very intelligent you get through quickly. It is very much aptitude. Some very intelligent people can struggle significantly on the Knowledge, whereas those who are perhaps more intellectually challenged find that they just have something that means they can do it. Personally, I would find it incredibly challenging. One of the nice things about the Knowledge, perhaps, is that it is such an achievement that those who do qualify value that achievement very greatly.

The actual learning process itself, to a large extent, is out of our hands. The Knowledge Schools have developed a number of initiatives over the years, which can be theme nights where they do a night where they do churches or clubs or something like that, to try to encourage students to learn particular aspects of points on runs. We work with the Knowledge Schools as far as we can.

The assessment system, also, at the early stage, has an initial assessment test, which is where an individual comes along and does a written test and then marks that test themselves. They will do that after the first 80 runs. The advantage of that is that they mark it themselves. If they made a complete and utter mess-up of that written assessment, it does not matter, as far as we are concerned. We do not know. It means that they are finding out whether the way that they have approached those first 80 runs is actually working. If they find they are doing well on that, then fine. They know they are on the right route. If they find they are not on the right route, and perhaps they are struggling a bit, there is a Knowledge examiner there at that assessment who can give them help and guidance and indicate, perhaps, the way that they should be going. We do try to help people as far as we can.

Roger Evans (Chair): I would just like to tie this up, because everyone this morning has had more time than they expected. That has been a good thing. John (Biggs), I promised to let you ask about conditions of fitness.

John Biggs (Assembly Member): There is actually one very big unanswered area of questioning, which is about supply and demand and its relevance to this. We do not have time to deal with that now, but I think that is a very pertinent issue. Conditions of fitness, I think it is just for the record that this has been going on for a long time. We understand that there are legal challenges and reasons why the new standard and proposals have not been issued yet, but can you just briefly update us on that and when some publication is likely?

Roy Ellis (PCO): I hate to say it – it is almost becoming my watchword, this – an announcement will be made in the coming weeks. That is what we are legally advised is what we should say. We can now qualify that by saying the announcement is to be expected before Christmas.

We are anxious to expedite the decision. We recognise that the uncertainty that has arisen within the taxi trade as to the direction that we are going in has been disruptive and has prevented individuals from making business decisions that they would otherwise have made by now. We are very anxious to progress it. I am hopeful that we are near the end of the road. As I say, a decision will be made in the coming weeks.

Roger Evans (Chair): I think that was an even more concise answer than the question was, on this occasion. Can I just ask you about demand? Obviously, this is something we will come back to, but the whole of the Mayor's strategy and a lot of things that have been said assume that there is more demand for black cabs than there are available and that the number of cabs is going down. Do you have research that has been done to actually back up that assumption?

Ed Thompson (PCO): The number of cabs and licensed drivers has been going up gradually over the last 30 years. We are up to 25,000 licensed drivers now, and that is probably double what it was 30 years ago. More drivers are owning their own cabs, now, so the number of cabs is going up as well.

Roger Evans (Chair): Do you feel you are not meeting demand?

Ed Thompson (PCO): We think, generally, there is a good service out there. We do waiting time surveys. The Licensed Taxi Drivers Association (LTDA) did a waiting time survey some time ago. I think we find that, most of the time, in most places where you would expect taxis to be providing a service – the big ranks, main streets around central London – you have a pretty good service. Again, most suburban railway station ranks, the big ones, pretty good service there as well.

However, there are times and places where it could be better. We touched upon it before. Late night, we would like to see more. In the Clapham issue, where the all-London drivers tend to go and work where it is busiest in the centre, but the inner London borough boundaries on the outer edge… We

think there probably is a bit of a ring there that is not as well served as it could be. Hackney is a very good example. That is what we are talking to the trade about. We hope to make some good progress on that next year. We recognise it, the trade recognises it, so I do not think…

Roger Evans (Chair): Is detailed work being done on matching that demand to what is being provided? In other words, this is not just about flooding the market with more cab drivers, but it is actually about meeting a specific demand at specific times within specific locations.

Ed Thompson (PCO) I think that is right, because we are not just saying let us… The difficulties or the challenges of the Knowledge mean we do not flood the market with cab drivers at a huge rate, and of course cab drivers do retire, as well. The long-term trend is gradually up, but I think you are right. We are saying there are specific times and places where there is a shortage, and what can we do about that? Is it good taxi ranks, is it marshalled ranks, is it something else? It is that. We have not quite got the science of, say, London Buses and the way it does its origin destination surveys and can tailor supply very closely to demand. We do not have that, because we do not control either the supply or the demand. However, as far as we can, we are doing what you suggest.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): Can I just make a quick comment? We did find that there were more taxi drivers over 70 than under 30 and that the median age was somewhere in between, round about 50, 55. It does seem as though the profile is an ageing profile. Nothing against age, but older taxi drivers will not necessarily want to work the unsocial hours or maybe want to work as many hours. They might want to just be two or three days. If that is the case, if there is an ageing process, obviously they will retire in the foreseeable future. As the PCO, you need to look at what is going to happen in the future and take a long-term view.

Roger Evans (Chair): Peter, I think you need to work on your brevity. I think we have an idea of the question.

Peter Hulme Cross (Assembly Member): The time it takes to take the Knowledge is coming down, from about four years towards three years, but it is still quite a long time out of anybody’s life to actually take the Knowledge. How do you see this developing?

Roy Ellis (PCO): I think the first point I would make in response to that is we do not have evidence of an ageing taxi trade population. We recognise that there is the older element, and I agree with you that some of those will not be working full-time or at the times that we might otherwise wish. The PCO only has data over about the last three years, and that does not show any significant trend towards an ageing population. We are aware, anecdotally, that many taxi drivers take up taxi driving as a second career, so you get former policemen, fire-fighters and postal workers who will often take up taxi driving as a second career. By definition, they are going to be a little more mature than others.

The one initiative that we have taken to try to address the suggestion that there is an ageing population is to lower the age at which you can start the Knowledge to 18. Again, however, those that are on the Knowledge at the moment are only 19 and 20. I do not think we have any actual 18- year-olds on the Knowledge at the moment. That means that someone can commit themselves to taxi driving as a career at an earlier age, which might introduce a younger element. It has been suggested to me recently that the taxi radio circuits may have some information about the age profile. If that is the case, a) it is not available to us and b) I am not sure to what extent that would necessarily be representative of the entire taxi driver population.

Roger Evans (Chair): Can we draw the line at that point? I know that this is a discussion that we can continue to have and, no doubt, we will have you back to update us at some point in the future. Thank you very much for your contribution this morning and we look forward to seeing the developments that are promised. Thank you Peter Hulme Cross for the report.