New safety officers deployed to stop bad behaviour on buses in Stoke-on-Trent

Specialist safety officers are being deployed across the bus network in Stoke-on-Trent to try and crack down on disruptive and abusive behaviour.

Six officers are funded to patrol across the bus network, including Hanley and Longton bus stations, providing a uniformed presence to deal with any issues or problems.

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

Extra powers to use in some cases

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

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

“Promoting the use of public transport across the city is a big priority for the administration. We have recently added extra journeys on a number of bus routes so that residents can enjoy improved access to work, healthcare, retail and much more."

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

The six new officers are funded for 15 months

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

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

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